In Competition No. 3002 you were invited to provide lyrics to the European anthem.
The anthem has as its melody the final movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 but dispenses with Schiller’s words. I wondered if anyone might go back to his 1785 ‘Ode to Joy’ and repurpose the following lines: ‘Yea, if any hold in keeping/ Only one heart all his own/ Let him join us, or else weeping/ Steal from out our midst, unknown.’ No one did, though there were frequent nods in the entry to other parts of the ode.
Over to the winners, who pocket £25 each. John Whitworth was an unlucky loser and W.J. Webster takes the extra fiver.
Fair Europa’s old, old story —
Innocence seduced by bull:
She was covered, not with glory,
Maid unmade, a trusting gull.
Out of such unnatural union
Came a still-born Eurostate,
Comity without communion,
Rule by distant delegate.
Symbol of this misconception,
Mined from German mother lode,
Sounds an anthem-like deception,
Brussels’ grand symphonic ode.
Joy is hymned as wealth increases
Where good trade for some has flowed:
Others, when the music ceases,
Only know a vast debt owed.
W.J. Webster
Freud and Schoenberg, Goethe, Foucault,
Cocteau, Faust and Nibelungs;
Overrated Goya, Munch and
Friedrich Schiller, Heine songs!
Who needs Bach or Schubert’s Lieder,
Beethoven, Brahms or Janacek?
Diderot, Descartes, Derrida? —
When you could have Ant and Dec!
How we’ll miss the great tradition
Of our friends across the wave:
Noddy Holder, One Direction,
Chuckle Brothers, Chas & Dave.
Ah! Your Only Fools and Horses,
Benny Hill and TOWIE styles —
What we’ll miss the most, of course, is
You — dear cultured Europhiles!
David Silverman
Brothers of this greater union
Daughters of Elysium
Firm we stand in grand communion
Staving off oblivion
Meeting at our various summits
Shaking one another’s hands
While the euro ever plummets
Shafting all our southern lands.
Quislings of the UK funken
Navigate their leaking boat
Clearly they are dead and sunken
By their futile Brexit vote
Leave us to our federating
Underneath this twelvefold star
With one voice communicating
Of our Mutter Angela.

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