Spectator Competition: Ode-worthy

For Competition 3391 you were invited to submit one of Keats’s odes rewritten as a sonnet or a limerick.

Four out of the five odes composed by Keats in the spring of 1819 feature in the winning line-up, as does ‘To Autumn’, written in September of that year. Once again there were many more winners than we have space for. A consolatory pat on the back to unlucky losers Benedict King, Duncan Forbes, Gail White, John Redmond, Jennifer Zhou, Iain Morley, David Cram and Mark Brown. The winners below earn a £25 John Lewis voucher.

It’s autumn, harvest-time, maturing sun,

Cue mellow fruitfulness, soft mists and bees,

Things ooze, swell, ripen, overflow and run,

Plump, sweet and sticky, plopping off the trees.

Personify the season; dreamy, hazy,

A drowsy gleaner watching cider ooze,

Asleep on furrows, poppy-drunk and lazy,

Thy hair soft-lifted as thou hast a snooze.

Forget the oft-euphoric songs of Spring,

Admire the sounds of autumn; lambs and gnats,

Migration-minded swallows twittering,

No need for blankets yet, nor thermostats.

How strange and how outlandish; Keats achieves

This ode without one word of falling leaves.

Janine Beacham

When life’s a bummer and you’re feeling blue

Don’t hit the bottle, binge on Valium

Or freak out using aconite and yew.

Self-poisoning is, like, insanely dumb:

It doubles your downbeat, depressive mood.

Better turn on to natural sounds and sights,

Like flowers or your squeeze’s pulchritude

The vibe there is a garden of delights.

Yet transcendental highs can never last.

Sooner or later circumstance will flip

A mind-blowing euphoria to the past;

You’re coming down. But that’s the total trip.

Pleasure is always tinctured with a pang

Of pure heartbreak, you dig – like Yin and Yang.

Basil Ransome-Davies

Poor piteous me, sunk in despair again,

Why can’t I be like you in seventh heaven?

I pine for some relief to ease my pain

While you soar skywards, singing on cloud seven.

O for some sweet elixir to disperse

My sorrows and transport me far from here

Where sad old men bemoan their lot and curse,

And all around seems colourless and drear.