Competition: Epigrammatic

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition

In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invited to submit quatrains reflecting on current events in the Middle East in the style of Edward FitzGerald/Omar Khayyam.

FitzGerald is, of course, master of the beautifully turned aphoristic phrase. And, as Cedric Watts points out in his introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition of the Rubaiyat, though he makes it looks effortless the rhyme scheme he uses in his translation — mostly AABA, though occasionally AAAA— is difficult to maintain; especially, as he does so fluently, for stanza after stanza. So the bar was set high. Frank McDonald triumphs this week and bags the bonus fiver. His fellow winners get £25 each.

Awake! For out of desolation’s night
The voice of hope that put the Shah to flight
Is heard across the land where pharaohs ruled,
And liberty decrees:  ‘Let there be light.’

The shifting sands in time’s eternal glass
See princes fall and tyrant pleasures pass;
One force that seemed immovable is gone,
Another rises from the seething mass.