COMPETITION

Just a lark

Jaspistos

cAINIAS REGAL

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY

In Competition No. 1669 you were in- vited to apply a nonsensical or light- hearted treatment to a given metre, once used seriously by Swinburne.

The parody I quoted when setting the competition was the work not of E.C. Benson, as I foolishly said, but of that much funnier fellow, Edward Clerihew Bentley. Few of you, with the exception of P.I. Fell, made good nonsense of it, but many were successfully light-hearted, not- ably Ginger Jelinek (marred by metrical hiccups), Peter Hadley, David Heaton, Gerard Benson and Philip Dacre, who got on his bike all right:

With sinuous tread And the poise of a dart Moves the traveller sped By a bicycle's art, Whose legs are his muscular pistons, his motor the pump of his heart.

The prizewinners, printed below, de- finitely earn their £15 apiece. I'm sorry I've lost my bottle, which would normally have gone to one of the first two.

One has been on the throne

For a little too long But experience has shown That one has to be strong: One's loyalty is to one's subjects — sixty million cannot be wrong.

When one feels it's no fun One reflects that one can't Hand the crown to a son Who can talk to a plant; When courtiers suggest abdication, one's response is immediate: 'Shan't!'

OVAS REZ14-) 12 YEAR OLD Ai SCOTCH WHISKY Yet one cannot forget

The events of last year; She was popular, yet Was flung out on her ear.

One thinks of what happened to Thatcher and comes over decidedly queer. (Peter Norman) There's a man with a top Hat and pipe and a flag, Which he's waving to stop The ten-five. Then a bag- Laden Landseer, flustered and hot, climbs aboard with his `Runnable Stag'.

There's a pause as the art- ist is thrust in the back And his painting is cart- ed above in the rack, And a young girl beside him says painting is fun when you're knowing the knack.

There's a tunnel in sight, Which the train clatters through, And the blackness of night Lasts a minute or two. The Victorian painter is quick with his brush, and the girl with her 'Coo!'

She was beautiful, smart.

I was just twenty-two.

I was pierced to the heart. Oh, those eyes —such a blue!

I hadn't yet dipped into Housman, so I never

expected to rue.

We were married in June.

The sun shone, we made hay.

We were over the moon, Love was fragrant and gay. We assumed life would always be thus; each tomorrow as good as today.

But the gilt was scraped off Our divine gingerbread.

She was irked by my cough, I by her clever head. I have read that short poem by AE — and he sure hit the nail on the head. (Frank Mullen) (David Phillips) (Philip Larkin kept a pair of binoculars in his librarian's desk, the better clandestinely to observe pretty students.) Though the years have diminished us Physical wrecks, Though the bottle has finished us, Something of sex Still retains (pace Sophocles) rags of old power to appal and perplex.

For the long in the tooth Who have lost all their looks The Librarian's truth (Meaning books and more books) Is a seemlier, safer pursuit than a deviant passion for youth.

Yet the flash of a thigh Or the jut of a breast Brings a tear to my eye And a pain to my chest For impossible dreams and illegal desires that can scarce be suppressed. (Fergus Pickering) When a man wears a hat, Or so I've been told, Be it round, square or flat, It's to keep out the cold, And he doesn't much care about colour or whether it's new or it's old.

Where a wife is concerned There are different rules, And a dozen are spurned As they fall between stools, For the colour must match both her dress and complexion in argent and gules.

But this isn't quite fair, For, at Ascot or Cowes, Every chap has to wear Just what custom allows, And at times he may even appear to outshine the most glorious spouse. (John Sweetman)