[Jayne Osborn]

Here you go - we love the bouts rimés, don't we, and we're good at this sort of thing, so let's show them just how good we can be!
(I've won it twice, when 1st place got a bottle of single malt Scotch as the bonus)

Jayne


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition no. 162
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

Time for the annual bouts rimés. Write a poem of 14 lines, please, with these words as the rhymes in the order given: plains, day, away, stains, pains, May, play, rains, leaves, suns, sheaves, breath, runs, death.

Entries to ‘Competition 162’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) or fax (020 7436 8804) by 5th April 2013.
Don’t forget to include your postal address.

[Roger Slater]

I'm sure you'll all do better than this, even though Keats had it easier since no one told him what rhymes he had to use:

After dark vapors have oppress'd our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of Summer rains.
The calmest thoughts came round us; as of leaves
Budding—fruit ripening in stillness—Autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves—
Sweet Sappho's cheek—a smiling infant's breath—
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs—
A woodland rivulet—a Poet's death.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Roger,
Not only is it harder to do with all the rhymes stipulated, but I'd guess that you've done it faster than Keats would have.
14 lines in an elapsed time of well under two hours.
Impressive!

[Susan McLean]

Douglas, Roger was implying that the poem he posted is by Keats.

Susan

[Douglas G. Brown]

Well, That does put a different light on it. Still, one has to know his Keats pretty well in order to pick out the right poem from a batch of rhymes.

[Douglas G. Brown]

A Life Well-Lived; James Earl Carter

This sturdy Georgia farm boy, born in Plains
Had worked his father’s peanut fields each day,
Until at age eighteen he went away
To learn to sail; then got saltwater stains
For seven years, until relieved of pains
To rove the world. Returning home in May,
And growing skilled at politics, he'd play
The power game like sunshine follows rains.

He reached the Apex, then like autumn’s leaves,
Fell back to Earth, and felt the cooling suns
Of Fame. Then God said “Gather ye the sheaves
To feed thy meekest brethren. Use thy breath
And strength to shelter those whose lives had runs
Of Fortune worse than thine; and challenge Death."


I have one factual error in this. How much poetic license is allowed?

[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Douglas G. Brown

Well, That does put a different light on it. Still, one has to know his Keats pretty well in order to pick out the right poem from a batch of rhymes.

Though I do know Keats fairly well, I confess that I got an assist from Google.

[Charlie Southerland]

When Plains Collide

Down here, the children watch the verdant plains
out of second story windows each day.
The teacher steps out for a few, away
from view with issues, wipes mascara stains
from her eyes and returns with covert pains,
a remembrance of lost love this past May.
At recess, the children go out to play
until the thunder chases them. It rains
here in June before school lets out, the leaves
tremble with drops; a thousand Aztec suns
couldn't dry her tears any more than sheaves
of tissues could, or make the babies' breath
come back to life or slow the clock that runs
for cover under attack to its death.

[Peter Goulding]

Some bloody good entries here. Charlie, I'm not sure they'd allow airplains!

I crawled desert plains
by night and by day,
till sun burned away
my badges of stains
and moon soothed my pains.

Hail, Queen of the May!
Once more, let me play
in warm, mellow rains
that nourish crisp leaves
and shimmer young suns
and glisten bound sheaves.

And I rode her breath
on the wave that runs
from the whorl of death.

[Charlie Southerland]

Thanks Peter,

I read Jayne's post really late last night about airplanes, after I posted, but I already had contingency line to fix it and did a minute ago. I don't like it as much. It will pass muster.

charlie.