[George Simmers]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Some of the lines are actually by Marlowe and one each by Robert Frost and a songwriter whose name escapes me.

And the 'hollow. hollow, hollow' bit is Tennyson, isn't it?

[Susan McLean]

John, I had recognized your earlier poem as a cento. It's clever, but I think you are better able to adapt the poem to the subject in the one with your own lines.

Susan

[John Whitworth]

Quite right,George. And there's a bit of Milton too. Susan, you are so very right.

[Chris O'Carroll]

I should have learned my lesson after I predicted that all the "friendly bombs" winners would use Betjeman's rhyme and meter, then George demonstrated how wrong I was. Of course blank verse isn't the only option for a Shakespearean soliloquy. Rhymed iambic pentameter, tetrameter (iambic or trochaic), even prose -- there's no shortage of other precedents.

[Peter Goulding]

John, I wouldn't recognise a cento if it reared up and bit me but I do love your second piece.

Isn't L4 short a syllable somewhere though?

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Peter. It should be, and now is, 'a king', Thanks for spotting that.

[Mary McLean]

That bastard Shakespeare called me bunch-backed toad,
helped Thomas More attest the attitude
deformity was proof of villainy.
My dunderheaded present-day defender
grew bedroom-eyed to see the handsome face
they plastered on a semblance of my skull.
(I’d have her, but I would not keep her long.)
She shuddered when they showed my twisted back,
refusing to believe my frame deformed,
as if it proved that all More’s words were true.
The straight-backed all are fools: a spine’s a spine.
Please keep blockhead buffoons away from mine.

[Don Jones]

Mary, this is excellent.

My favorite line to date from all the entries (not counting the lines from the cento):

(I’d have her, but I would not keep her long.)

So true.

Don

[Mary McLean]

Thanks, Don! I'm worried it might be a bit cruel for the Spectator, but it was fun to write. And I agree that the best line is Shakespeare's

[Brian Allgar]

Yes, I reckon old Will could have won this competition hands down in his own words, although of course his references to car-parks are regrettably sparse.

I rather like it, though, Mary. Presumably "bunch-backed" is a typo?