Spectator competition winners: patchwork poetry

In Competition No. 3164 you were invited to submit a poem in which each line comes from a different well-known poem.

The cento form — the stitching together of lines from existing poems — is an ancient one, around since at least the days of Virgil and Homer. ‘Cento Nuptialis’, by the Roman poet and teacher Decimus Magnus Ausonius, is a whopping 131-liner, composed of lines, or half-lines, from Virgil’s Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogue.

You were required to cobble together a mere 16 lines (or fewer if you chose), but the challenge, obviously, was to avoid sliding into nonsense. It was an accomplished entry — many of you chose to mine the same poetic seams — and once again, there was a welcome sprinkling of new names among the regulars.

Commendations go to Philip Roe, Avril Bradley, Jayne Osborn, Nick Syrett, Maggie McLean and Georgia Faloone. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each.

I met a lady in the meads,Lying robed in snowy white Her robe ungirt from clasp to hem,And I was filled with such delight   She put my arm about her waist; The sighs she heaved were soft and low; We like sepulchral statues lay Into the yellow evening glow.   I never saw so sweet a face. I ne’er shall see its likeness more. Under the Judas-coloured sun She sucked until her lips were sore.   Her beauty fed my common earth With apple blossom in her hair,Where rivulets dance their wayward round;My heart goes back to wander there. Max Ross

Begin, and cease, and then again begin: When I have crossed the bar And stooped and drank a little more And the wine that tasted of the tar   With beaded bubbles winking at the brim But colourless, colourless —It was evening all afternoon,A tender hazy brightness:   How? Where? What matter? Somewhere in a dream, With monstrous head and sickening cry There came from me a sigh of pain:I am sick, I must die.