Competition | 30 January 2010

In Competition No. 2631 you were invited to submit a poem on a subject of your choice in which the last two words of each line rhyme. There was an element of ambiguity in the wording of this challenge, and a handful of you read it as meaning that the last two words of a line should rhyme with the last two in the line below (rather than the last two words rhyming with each other). All entries were considered.

I was actually thinking along the lines of George Herbert’s ‘Heaven’ (although in that poem the echo rhyme is given its own line),  and then of course there are the triple rhymes — a rhyme too far for some, perhaps — of Thomas Hood’s ‘A Nocturnal Sketch’, which a few competitors alluded to.

The worthy winners, printed below, get £25 each. This week’s man of the match is Ray Kelley, who pockets an extra fiver.