Spectator competition winners: marriage proposals in the style of famous writers

In Competition No. 3342 you were invited to submit a proposal of marriage in the style of a famous writer.

The overall standard was high, and entries that impressed and amused include Bob Trewin’s Hemingway, Dorothy Pope’s Larkin and Nicholas Lee’s Conan Doyle. Janine Beacham’s Masefield’s also shone:

I must go down on one knee again, if you’ll wed
      me on the fly,

And all I ask is an office do, with no friends or
      family by…

The most prizeworthy are printed below and earn £25 each.

Because thou hast not nam’d the Day
Such Task doth fall – to Me
Am I too late? – I cannot wait
For all Eternity

My Heart is nigh to Overflow
A Reservoir – of Love
Must thou eschew Commitment still –
May Push ne’er come – to Shove?

Be thou my Soul’s – Fulfilment
Else am I incomplete
Wherefore thy limp Timidity –
What mak’st thou so effete?

O dire Despair – thou dost not care
One Jot! I’ll seek no Other,
Unwif’d, Unlif’d – I fear I should
Have listen’d to – my Mother

Mike Morrison/Emily Dickinson

Had we but world enough and time,
This urgence, lady, were no crime.
Yet, young, hot-blooded, still unwed,
We may be by temptation led,
Seek actions carnal and profane,
Defying edicts that constrain
To spoil our virtuous, virgin state –
To name it plain, to fornicate,
Unhallowed, fleshly, skin to skin.
Lust is, we know, a deadly sin.
Only the marriage bed can bless
Desire with seemly Godliness.
Dear heart, forgive my pressing haste,
But I would not have thee unchaste.
God speed the day when we shall be
United pure and lawfully!

Basil Ransome-Davies/Andrew Marvell

My dear, dear Mr Darcy,

Won’t you marry me? For it is a truth universally acknowledged that an impecunious gentlewoman with ambitions to establish herself as an Author must be in want of a rich husband, and preferably a handsome one. I often imagine – though I dare not write – a scene in which you come to me having swum a lake, in a tight and quite voluptuously wet shirt.