[basil ransome-davies]

Yes, it's tough at the top, Brian. But ya gotta be Sisyphus, keep at it. I once won one of these, back in the day. I just wish I could remember the damn thing.

[John Whitworth]

Here's the one I did then.


Silvery Tay

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,
Beautiful railway bridge of the silvery Tay?
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Both of them speak of something that is gone.

The whiles someone did chant this lovely lay.
‘Beautiful railway bridge of the silvery Tay,
So absolute she seems and in herself complete!’
He opened the door and he walked down the street.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,
Across the railway bridge of the silvery Tay!
Bid me to weep, and I will weep
Wide as the realms of air, or planet’s curving sweep.

Beautiful new railway bridge of the silvery Tay,
The breath of Winter comes from far away.


Line 1: Shakespeare: Sonnet 18
Line 2: McGonagall: The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay
Line 3: Tennyson: Tithonus
Line 4: Wordsworth: Immortality Ode
Line 5: Spenser:: The Faerie Queen, The Song of the Rose
Line 6: McGonagall: The Tay Bridge Disaster
Line 7: Milton: Paradise Lost Book 8
Line 8: Ayres: Arthur Dan Steeley. The Novelty Act
Line 9: Hopkins: Sonnet: I Wake…
Line 10: McGonagall: The Newport Railway
Line 11: Herrick: Bid Me To Live
Line 12: Austin: Love’s Trinity
Line 13: McGonagall: An Address to the New Tay Bridge
Line 14: Keats: Isabella

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by basil ransome-davies

Yes, it's tough at the top, Brian. But ya gotta be Sisyphus, keep at it. I once won one of these, back in the day. I just wish I could remember the damn thing.

Sisyphus? Nah, I can't stand the Rolling Stones.

This sounds to me like more work for less pleasure than any competition since the Shakespeare anagrams.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Tyger tyger, burning bright
Do not go gentle into that good night.




Yes, I know, it needs more than a couplet, but that's got to be the start of one...

[Adrian Fry]

Since I was born too late to hav received the kind of English education that consisted of being forced to learn half of Q's Oxford Book of English Verse by heart, I am counting myself out of this one

[basil ransome-davies]

Où sont les autodidactes d'antan?

[John Whitworth]

PATCHWORK POETRY

Oh blame me not if I no more can write.
In nothing art thou black, save in thy deeds.
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Thou mayst be false and yet I know it not,
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
Beyond all date, even to eternity.
Oh never say that I was false of heart.
What is thy substance, whereof are you made?
For still temptation follows where thou art,
But now my gracious numbers are decayed.
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought.
Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought.

Shakespeare Sonnets 103, 131, 98, 94, 92, 28, 71, 122, 109, 53, 41, 79, 30, 32

[Jayne Osborn]

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.
(Michael Drayton: Since there’s no help)
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again.
(John Donne: Batter my heart)
To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart.
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Farewell to Love)
It was great wrong you did me; and for gain.
(Rupert Brooke: A Memory)

So do our minutes hasten to their end.
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet No. 60)
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Go from me)
Someday you certainly will comprehend,
(Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: Sonnet 10)
When you can no more hold me by the hand.
(Christina Rossetti: Remember)

For conversation, when we meet again,
(Edna St Vincent Millay: ‘I, being born a woman and distressed’)
And thus reflecting, you will never see
(Thomas Hardy: She, to Him – 2 )
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain.
(Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Lover Compareth his State to a Ship in Perilous Storm Tossed on the Sea)
O give me back the days of loose and free.
(Henry Longfellow: Youth and Age)

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled,
(Percy Bysshe Shelley: Adonais)
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d.
(John Keats: Ode on Melancholy)
Lying apart now, each in a separate bed.
(Elizabeth Jennings: One Flesh)
What better excuse to go out and get pissed?
(Sean O’Brien: from Notes on the Use of the Library (Basement Annexe))

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by Brian Allgar

This sounds to me like more work for less pleasure than any competition since the Shakespeare anagrams.

I guess this just shows how tastes differ.. I'm enjoying this challenge, and really enjoyed the Shakespeare anagram one (though didn't win anything..)