Spectator competition winners: famous poems in reverse

In Competition No. 3309, you were invited to compose a poem starting with the last line of any well-known poem and ending with its first, the new poem being on a different subject from the original.

Max Ross’s sonnet, reflecting on the demands of the task in hand, earns a commendation:

The task for which I now am all too weak
Consumes a wealth of hours as I implore
Hundreds of poets to give me what I seek
And sometimes I decide to search no more… 

As does Bob Trewin’s entry, which uses Dylan Thomas’s line – ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ – to highlight the challenging consequences, for some, of net zero. The winners earn £25 each.

Though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster,
Defeat can be rewarding all the same.
Venality creates temptations vaster
Than fairly playing up to play the game.  

The Black Sox scandal of 1919
Exposed finagling on the baseball field.
Eight losing players were pronounced unclean;
The fix succeeded, but somebody squealed.