Spectator competition: a final ‘if’ for Kipling’s ‘If’ (plus: compose an autumn villanelle)

The call to add a final stanza to a well-known poem attracted an enormous entry. Nicholas Stone imagined how Coleridge might have continued had it not been for the intrusion of the Person of Porlock. Tracy Davidson’s coda to ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ painted a picture of interspecies conjugal bliss-turned-sour. And Penn Harvey added a final installment to Wallace Stevens’s chilly modernist masterpiece ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’. There were strong performances all round this week, and it was difficult to whittle down the entry. Bill Greenwell, Katie Mallett, Alanna Blake, Mike Morrison and Brian Murdoch were pipped to the post, but only just, by the prize-winners below, who are rewarded with £15 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the bonus fiver.

Chris O’Carroll/‘The King’s Breakfast’ The Queen had A word with The King’s Cardiologist. ‘I fear my husband’s over fond Of dairy foods’, she said. ‘Butter can be Dangerous’, The doctor warned Her Majesty. ‘If Royal arteries get clogged, The King could wake up dead.’

John Whitworth/‘If’ If you can celebrate the state of ifness In hortatory verses by the yard, Your upper lip emphatic in the stiffness Most proper to a very British bard, If you can master every sticky wicket And triumph after falling on your arse, Then you will find that you are just the ticket To be a hero of the middle class.

D.A. Prince/‘If’ But if, despite all this, you come a cropper — Fall face down in the mud and can’t get up; If being macho’s scary or improper, If stiffened upper lips are not your cup; Then hug a tree, or paint your nails; whatever. You’ll find some newer way of getting by. Lift high your head: we’re all in this together — Remember, it’s OK for men to cry.

Most popular

Douglas Murray

What else could Israel do?

David Silverman/‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ The urn breaks! as that drowsy numbness dulls My sense, and Truth and Beauty hit the floor, As one more draught of purple vintage lulls Me ever closer Lethe-wards once more. Once Attic shape! Now in a thousand pieces, As I, now calculating what this means, Alone and palely gluing and forlorn: Her priceless artefact from Ancient Greece is Now in Hampstead, smashed to smithereens — O What am I to say to Fanny Brawne?

G.M. Davis/‘Fire and Ice’ So far it’s only freeze or burn, But maybe not. As time goes by we live and learn To see the sum of things, and spurn A simple choice of cold or hot. When health and spirit both are squeezed I fear that Earth, this fertile plot, May grow diseased And simply rot.

Robert Schechter/‘The Darkling Thrush’ And so I thought, What could it be? Perhaps my sombre mood, That sense of life’s vacuity, Was caused by lack of food? I took aim from the coppice gate, The hope inside me stirred, And I felt better once I ate That optimistic bird.

Brian Allgar/‘Christabel’ That night, she shed empoisoned tears, Threw off her womanly disguise, Spat venom in the daughter’s ears And in the father’s sleeping eyes. When morning came, how he did stare! He looked upon his daughter fair But saw instead a serpent vile, For Geraldine had worked her guile. ‘Begone, foul creature!’ cried the Knight. Sir Leoline, what hast thou done? Thy Christabel hath fled thy sight, And who knows whither she hath run? The venom worked within her veins; She stumbled, hissing as she fell, A writhing snake the sole remains Of lovely lady Christabel.

Martin Parker/‘Cargoes’ English Channel ferry packed with foreign lorries Nosing into Dover every day of the year With a cargo of secrets, Desperation, Homelessness, uncertainty and hope and fear.

A.G. Atkinson/‘This Is Just To Say’ I left the stones on the table. You can clean up.

W.J. Webster/‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ Anon, I know, the sleeper will arise, Provoked by light to hawk itself awake And seek again what living it can make As, turn-about, one sells, another buys. Then is the City seen with other eyes, A place that none may calmly gaze upon, The stillness and the gentle silence gone, The selfsame buildings in another guise. For what I now behold is like a dream Where Nature’s beauty could be matched by Man: Iron and brick, carved stone and harnessed stream Made wondrous as deep fells and crags to scan. They are, in truth, yet are not what they seem, As shifting as the flow these arches span.