COMPETITION

Latin exercise .

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1398 you were asked to write a poem in English but in a Latin metre.

Down in a deep, dark hole sat an old cow chewing a beanstalk:

Out of her mouth came forth harmonious melody.

This was the strange couplet we were taught to chant at school to impress upon our memories the metre of elegiacs (a hexameter followed by a pentameter), some of us sotto voce emending the last two words to 'yesterday's dinner and tea'. English poems in Latin metres are deuced difficult to write, especially if the Latin longs' and 'shorts' are strictly observed. Clough's Amours de Voyage, in hexa- meters occasionally varied with elegiacs, is surely the most successful long example.

As for sapphics, Cowper's 'Hatred and Vengeance, My Eternal Portion' and Southey's 'The Widow' are both deeply moving despite the exotic, artificial metre, and George Canning's 'The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder' must be the funniest poem written by a future prime minister — though, as politicians will, he got help from someone else. (All three are in The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse.) Alcaics strike me as the hardest, but Tennyson pulled them off marvellously in his verses to Milton: '0 mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies . . I was almost hoist with my own pedantic petard by Richard Dove and Roger Jeffreys who respectively threw at me Catullan galliam- bics and `a stanza of two ionic tetrameters followed by an ionic dimeter': if I gave prizes for sheer nerve they would have been rewarded.

The fact that four out of the five prize- winners (who get £10 each) used sapphics is probably due to the fact that a little bit of licence doesn't seem to do them any harm. Nancy Wilkinson was charming but too licentious, and 0. Banfield was another excellent runner-up. Noel Petty overshot the limit by four lines, but his entry is so appealing that I print it uncut. The bottle of Volnay Santenots-du-Milieu 1982 Com- te Lafon (the gift of Morris & Verdin, Wine Merchants, 28 Churton St, London SW1) goes to Peter Hadley, who, without strain, gave his Latin metre the embellish- ment of English rhyme.

Sapphics

Once in my youth for Honour Moderations Verses I learned which I can still remember: Now must I sit these new examinations In my December.

Scansion means nothing to the modern poet, Rhyme is outmoded also, more's the pity, Lines end at random anywhere, although it Looks very pretty.

Therefore, Jaspistos, thank you for imposing These long-neglected disciplines of metre: Horace salutes you, as do I in closing Gratefully, PH. (Peter Hadley) Sapphics (after Canning) Friend of Humanity: Needy Knife-grinder in your dingy jacket, How did fortune fail you? What is your background?

Inner City? Child of a broken marriage? Brought up in squalor?

Knife-grinder:

Not at all, sir. These are my clothes for working—

Save my really snappy stuff for the weekend, Plus, I keep a suit in the Ford Granada, Just round the corner.

Trade is brisk, sir. I have some other lines in Sunbeds, double glazing and carpet-cleaning. Have you any axes to grind yourself, sir? Strictly for cash, mind.

Friend of Humanity: Damn your sauce! What a crazy world we live in!

Things are pretty sick when a door-to-door man Runs a bigger car than a person in the Caring professions! (Noel Petty) Sapphics Twirling leaves descend in the campus forecourt; Chatting girls with sensible shoes and sweaters Throng the stairwell down to the lecture theatre; Autumn is on us.

By her study window the new professor, Fresh from Cambridge, scholar of much distinction, Lays aside Catullus and coolly glances Down at the freshers, Thinks of Sappho, thinks of the golden maidens Once so loved and sung on the isle of Lesbos, Gone to dust — and, gath'ring her gown about her, Goes to her lecture. (Gerard Benson) Hexameters Lately the challenge came, no longer ago than a fortnight.

Sixteen lines were demanded in praise of a stoical, gloomy Outlook which no one could name here, where are but dactyls and spondees; Choice work perfectly managed by Housman in 'I to my perils . .

Somewhat inhibited, therefore (deeply regretting the fact), one Steered clear then of the contest and possibly might have done better Now to keep equally silent, firm in the face of temptation.

Clearly not Tennyson, Bridges, nor Clough nor yet Longfellow even Need, if in Hades shades can feel threat, feel himself threatened.

Nevertheless, the old rhythm, once settled, is strangely insistent, Even when quantities falter (stress is much less of a problem).

Starting was hard, God knows, but it's ndt very easy to finish.

(M. R. Macintyre) Sapphics Gay arc we who live in the city of London, Free at last to practise our modus vivendi. Queen Victoria didn't believe we existed— Ignorant she was. We get paid to foster our predilections. Straights are not so lucky as we in these things, Nor did Sappho ever receive a grant for Lesbian communes. (John Dean)