Making it rhyme is the real killer, as I'm sure Jayne and John (and others) will agree. Try looking for a line that rhymes with 'dog' and can be fitted into the poem so that it (more or less) makes sense. Add to this the fact that I don't have any books of poetry in Paris, and had to try to find lines by means of interminable and laborious searches on the Internet ... Jayne, I think I'd almost rather pay a visit to - EEK! - the d*nt*st.

Brian, I'll take your word for it! Maybe one day I'll give it a try, but no point in running before I can walk. My cento came entirely from a volume called "The Nation's 100 Favourite Poems," which seems an appropriate pun.

Inicidentally, there doesn't seem to be any rule that centos are supposed to rhyme. Most examples I can find online don't. I'm sure Jayne's will win since it goes that extra mile as well as being very funny, but people shouldn't be put off from trying a cento because of the near-impossibility of the task. There's a lot of fun to be had with blank verse.

Mary, there's certainly no rule that says that centos have to rhyme, unless you're one of those mugs like me whose motto is: "Why make life difficult for yourself if you can make it virtually impossible?"

Jayne is unstoppable, but that's never stopped me before.
It's not a pure cento, but I like the little thing.


The Iterative Shortstop

Something there is that will not glove a ball.
Mitts fall apart; the webbing is too tight.
Wild men who leap and drop it in mid-flight—
What but design of darkness to appall?

Nor is the art of bobbling hard to master.
I have been one acquainted with its bite.
Hot grounder! Hot grounder! Burning in the night!
What immortal hand or eye is faster?

They cannot scare me with their extra bases,
The hands that wrought them or the fans to see.
A bad hop is a world made cunningly,
But I see pennant where the sticking place is.

What do you think? Does this work?

FLOTSAM (Alternate title - SNIPPETS FROM THE SEA)

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
and the dish ran away with the spoon.
The sea was as wet as wet could be
by the bright, green light of the moon.

‘Twas a Friday morn when we set sail,
sailed off in a wooden shoe.
I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail
and round and round it flew.

A capital ship for an ocean trip
when the water’s blue.
When stars can be heard in ocean dip,
thus are all dreams made true.

We sailed along for days and days,
through seas of inky air,
where everything seems to happen in waves,
the deepest world we share.



Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-cat; Anon., Hey Diddle Diddle; Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter; Elizabeth Coatsworth, The Bad Kittens.

Anon., The Mermaid; Eugene Field, A Dutch Lullaby; Anon., I Saw a Peacock; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Charles Edward Carryl, The Walloping Window-Blind; Winifred Howard, A Windy Day;Thomas Moore, I’ve a Secret to Tell Thee; Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Dream-Pedlary.

Robert Louis Stevenson, A Good Play; W.S. Gilbert, To the Terrestrial Globe; Elizabeth Bishop, Letter to N.Y. ; May Sarton, A Light Left On.

I'm lapping up this confidence you all seem to share, that I'm going to win this comp - so if I don't I'll come crying to the lot of you! ;)

Mary, I think yours is simply brilliant, and brilliantly simple. And, speaking of one who is crap at thinking of titles for poems, in The Speccie - yay! - you don't have to!

I had to check out this long thread--and now I see why it's long! Such fun. And Jayne, you gotta win. I also love--off top of head--Mary McL, Mary M, and Lance's "hamburger." I just love "Mitts fall apart!"

Good luck to all!

Charlotte

Jayne, (belatedly) thanks for your feedback! - most welcome.

Mary, your Christmas with the In-Laws Up North provoked hearty laughter - especially that last line!

I've re-jigged my original clunky attempt somewhat.

The Encounter

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.
On the last Sabbath day of 1879
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Shop after shop, with symbols, blazoned names;

Then after roaming far and wide,
Half a league, half a league,
I came upon her without warning,
Wearing white for Eastertide;

Then let no winter’s ragged hand deface
Handsomest of all the women:
Full beautiful – a faery’s child!
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!

“I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head –“
"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
In the tea-shop’s ingle-nook.”
I won the Queen because my hair was red.

Sources:

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
William Topaz McGonagall, the Tay Bridge Disaster
William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth, The Prelude, book 7

Robert Service, The Quest
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
Robert Graves, Darien
AE Housman, Loveliest of trees

William Shakespeare, Sonnets, VI
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hiawatha’s Wooing
John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, IV
Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, Fit the 2nd

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, IX
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Excelsior
John Betjeman, In a Bath tea-Shop
WH Auden, The Quest, XV

I think Jayne's got it! My powers of fancy (as STC called it) couldn't quite rise to this occasion. I kept trying to fashion a dialogue between Shakespeare and Robert Frost, but the lack of a Frost concordance did me in.

Sam, There is a concordance of Robert Frost, at least of two of his books (A Boy's Will and North of Boston) here: http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/concordance/
At the same site are concordances for scores of Victorian Poets, British/Irish poets and American poets. I found using it very helpful to find lines that rhymed.
Mary