Water works

In Competition No. 2755 you were invited to submit an ‘Ode to rain’.

No doubt you saw this one coming, what with monsoon June and July’s 50 shades of grey skies. In any case, the lively and entertaining postbag the challenge elicited was certainly a welcome antidote to the ongoing misery of being semi-housebound or repeatedly soaked to the skin.

Gerard Benson, Katie Mallett, Mae Scanlon, Roger Theobald and Basil Ransome-Davies were unlucky to miss out on a place in the winning line-up. Those that did make the cut are printed below and rewarded with £25 apiece. Mary Holtby pockets the bonus fiver.

A one-off award this week for the most aptly named competitor goes to Mick Poole.

Come, proper Muses, bring your tears
To this high-water mark of years:
Melpomene and Clio be
The mates of mourning Niobe —
(And Noah, have a word with God,
Who swore there’d be no second flood,
While every street observer marks
A multiplicity of arks)

Rain, rain, O rain!
Alas, what boots it to complain?
No lake can compass thee, no pit, no drain;
Ten thousand brooms sweep over thee in vain.
A sodden nation scarcely can recall
Those Junes of jollity, a sun that scorches…
We would forgive thee, if thou wert to fall
Fatally on the flame of touring torches.
Mary Holtby

To end a drought, by God’s good grace
Our prayers are answered with this gift.
The natural order back in place,
Our spirits lift.

We live and prosper by this trade,
The rise of vapour, fall of rain:
Two elements combined and made
An endless chain.

The clouds are reservoirs to tap
For what will be the earth’s life-blood
Transmuted into juice and sap
Or leaf and bud.

Without fresh draughts of rain, the lakes
Would shrivel under parching sun
Along with every spring that makes
The rivers run.
W.J. Webster

The sun — harsh, parching tyrant of the sky —
Has been our daily master for too long.