[John Whitworth]

Well I might mend my wretched form of late with this one.

No. 2804: rhyme time


You are invited to supply a poem containing as many ingenious rhymes as possible (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 26 June.

[Brian Allgar]

And I dare say you've already got quite a few of those tucked away, John.

[Jayne Osborn]

And I dare say you've already got quite a few of those tucked away, John.

... says the very Master of Ingenuity himself

[John Whitworth]

Indeed I do. Here's an opening bid.

Love You Madly

Air:'Rapture, Rapture' from 'The Yeomen of the Guard'

Love you madly, love you crazily,
Love you eagerly, love you lazily,
Love you everly, leave you neverly,
Daft or cleverly, daffy-down-daisily.

Care’s a rough, resorts to thuggery,
Care’s a tough, employs skulduggery,
Care’s subliminal, care’s buliminal,
Care’s a criminal blown to buggery.

Love is sweet and indestructible.
You’re complete and ineluctable,
Toast and honey and fine and funny and
On the money and tax-deductable.

Pippety-poppety, down to Scarborough,
Market Rasen, Market Harborough,
See the Acropolis, then Minneapolis,
Indianapolis, Santa Barbara

[Roger Slater]

A girl who wears a magic skirt'll
be transformed into a turtle.

But if she changes clothes, the girl'll
be transformed into a squirrel.

And that's not all! A clever boy'd
be wise and prudent to avoid

the girl and to refuse to date her.
With earrings she's an alligator

whose every tooth's a sharp incisor,
and you will be her appetizer.

[Brian Allgar]

Though “Mozart” denotes art, we don’t give a goat’s fart
For “Don Giovanni” or “Cosi Fan Tutte”;
They shove down our throats art that’s high as a stoat’s fart -
Just give us a sarnie, a soggy chip butty.

If somebody quotes art, we get on our coats; art
Is stuff for the nerdies, the birdies, the beardies.
This “too many notes” art is not-worth-two-groats art,
So nuts to your Verdis, and other such weirdies.

With drivel like Haydn’s, the culture gap widens,
And Schubert to you, Bert, is boring and wooden.
This muck they call music makes both me and you sick
(Though Parry - old Hubert - came up with a good ‘un).

To those who cry “Play us the great Amadeus”,
Or “Let’s have some Dvorak, some Bach, some Corelli”,
You’ll have to belay us, or flay us, or pay us
To swallow your score, Jack. Now, what’s on the telly?


(It's all lies, of course. I adore Mozart and the others, but I'd sell my grandmother for a good joke, and my sister for an ingenious rhyme.)

[Marcus Sevat]

"Well I might mend my wretched form of late with this one."

Your form has hardly been wretched. A pity about our treasure store that was once the Literary Review Grand Poetry Comp. Here's my idea for Lucy's latest.

He’s not in New Guinea, Brazil or Alaska;
His only abode is remote Madagascar.
The way that he hops and his big eyes reveal a
Lemur that lives around Andohehela,
And though classed as rare there appear to be plenty
In the island’s reserves for wild life near Berenty.
Go on a tour and of course you may track a
White coated lemur. It’s Verreaux’s sifaka.
Like many poor beasts that have come to grief too
This lemur’s a marvel in Tenerife Zoo.
In the wild it attracted too much with its fuss,
A poor little primate called Propithecus,
And now its survival depends on man’s charity,
This tree-loving creature, our cuddliest rarity.
Would God (do you think?) want a world that would lack a
Four footed fun-ball like Verreaux’s sifaka?

[John Whitworth]

I haven't seen any examples yet of this sort of rhyme:

There was a young lady of Bude
Who danced on the stage in the nude.
A young fellow cried, 'What a m-
Agnificent bottom!'
Just like that. Straight out loud. Bloody rude.

Or indeed of this:

Come all you lords of ladies intellectual
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?

[Brian Allgar]

Yep, I reckon Byron could have done well in this competition.

[John Whitworth]

Some of you may have seen a version of this in KIN the on-line magazine. I've supercharged it with rhymes, perhaps at the expense of the poetry. I would welcome Orwn's opinion on that.

Sweet Albert

Antic and frantic and antediluvian,
Monument massive, impassive, magnificent,
Kitsch which is rich as the Inca Peruvian,
Omnium-gatherum, omnibenificent,

Fashioned with passion, a festival sculptural,
Multiform, vermiform, multidimensional,
Menhir memorious, mass-multicultural,
Scorning conformalist classic conventional,

Solemn sepulchral, a sombre funereal
Fief for the grief-stricken Empress of India,
Dateless as sorrow and weightless as Ariel,
Scion of iron when weather wears windier.

Work is the theme and the dream is sensational,
Magic, majestical phantasmagoria,
Seeking the skies in a guise inspirational,
Votive, emotive, VICTORIA GLORIA.