Spectator competition winners: Double rhyme time

The latest competition called for poems on the theme of summer in which the last two words of each line rhyme. It was only after the entries started coming in that I realised that my sloppy wording meant that the brief was open to interpretation. In most submissions, the last two words in a line rhymed with one another, which is what I had intended, but a few supplied poems in which the last two words in a line rhymed with the last two in the line below. Either approach was admissible, and variety made the comp all the more pleasurable to judge. This nice four-liner from Robert Schechter turned my head:

In summer it’s a good bet sweat will moisten those who bide outside, and though this means they may get wet, it cools them like a seaside tide.

As did this, from an even more pithy Jayne Osborn:

What? Not rain . . . AGAIN!

Equally worthy of note were Adrian Fry, D.A. Prince, Mel Stone, Mike Morrison and Max Wallis. The winners below earn £25 each; Alan Millard pockets £30.

Alan Millard Expect Gay May to be Plain Jane And, having suffered May, soon June Will bring a daily noon monsoon! On dry July your bet forget It’s ten to one you’ll all get wet, Best wager pigs will soon fly high Than on a dry July rely. On weather forecasts none must trust But to an August gust adjust, If promised sun, you’ll soon meet sleet And run for shelter on fleet feet. Our summertime we, each year, fear For bringing nothing but sheer drear, So pray to see it long-past fast And hope it goes with one last blast.

Bill Greenwell It scars the heart of each hard-bitten Briton: The weatherwoman, like a tongue-tied bride, Gesturing words by Bulwer Lytton written, ‘Dark and stormy’. So, red-eyed, unfried,

We know it’s summer when our rainclouds       crowd, When even pure mouths, sighting rain, profane, When tan-fans cry, as they’re not proud, aloud, When desperate, we head for Spain again.

Yet every year, we praise September’s embers, Cry ‘Indian summer!’, blow a fuse, enthuse — Of the human race, we’re, one remembers,       members — And rush to buy some good-news barbecues.

And aren’t we all real nitwits, hypocrites? Is any tribe more foolish, dumber, glummer? In June, the rain will always, damn it, spit: Let’s praise our English — call the drummer! —       summer.

John Whitworth Those days of summer are the bees knees. You lie there basking in the bright light. Long days of summer at your ease please. The poet johnnies have it quite right.

We share the strawberries and cream dream, And fill our goblets with a fine wine, Where little wavelets in the stream gleam That make the pressings of the vine shine.

Hot days are perfect for the cute fruit, Likewise the beautifully styled child. Let’s cut a caper in a zoot suit And turn the generally mild wild.

Come Love, between us shall the glass pass. Let’s unequivocally praise days Spent languid, lounging on the grass, arse Upturned, and through the steamy haze gaze.

Chris O’Carroll Let bright days of bare skin begin, Iced cocktails made with gin begin, An Erroll Flynn-like grin begin, This season’s cool hot sin begin.

Homage to sea and sun begun, Let youth leave no mad fun undone. Age savours calmer homespun fun, Yet joys to find young fun begun.

We hear the mermaids on each beach (Unless that’s each seagull’s beach screech.) We even dare to taste each peach, For salt plus sweet each beach beseech.

A sensuality decree Ripples sunlit sea tapestry, Dispels ennui and breeds sea glee. Sun and esprit set sea glee free.

Dorothy Pope Thanks be, they are deciduous, these trees. Now in this January cold, their bare and slender, lilting finger-twigs lift, sift, like housewife’s flour, the falling snow, know instinctively it is their season’s task, ask nothing more of winter, knowing Spring’s wings

will sweep them green-bud-clean soon enough,       rough winds will pass, in turn the crocus focus our sun-hungry eyes on its bold gold. In summer will the migrant swallow follow.

These dainty morning footprints are birds’       words — assurances. The snow will, I know, go. Earth will renew its guarantee, agree to flowers, acorns, snow beneath these trees.

G.M. Davis In a seaside summer, street heat is dispersed in the sea, the salt, cobalt source of buoyancy. Each beach wears a coverlet of bodies packed intact, but little covers this nude multitude. What those few who aren’t bare wear is next to nothing. The Germans just can’t wait       to strip, hip and uninhibited as jazz. August for the glad unclad, for those whose dreams star Ra, for the stern naturist who loathes clothes, for those on their favourite islands who boil, oil and tan their bark dark. Summer is the real deal. Peel.

Tennyson wrote: ‘Bright and fierce and fickle is the South and dark and true and tender is the North’. Your next challenge is to submit a poem about either the North or the South or one comparing the two. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 24 August.