In Competition No. 3251, you were invited to submit a poem to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee in the style of a poet present or past. Perhaps inspired by the lines written by William McGonagall to mark the death of his beloved Queen Victoria – Alas! our noble and generous Queen Victoria is dead,/And I hope her soul to Heaven has fled… – several competitors, including G.M. Southgate, Jerry Emery and Ewan Brown, imagined the Bard of Dundee paying tribute to Her Majesty. And top of the pops among the poets laureate was John Betjeman.
In a smallish but well-made and jolly entry, Mark Bellis, Ian Barker and Janine Beacham earn honourable mentions. The winners snaffle £25 each.
If you can keep your throne when others totter And join it to a democratic creed, If you can bear it that one son’s a rotter, Another keen as mustard to succeed; If you can wave and not get sick of waving, At multitudes whose names you do not know Or listen to a bonkers PM raving, While never letting your impatience show; If you can treat stale rituals as normal, The cutting of the ribbon and all that, Where every single move is tightly formal And dress and coat must always match the hat; If you can serve a role that must be gruelling, But protocol forbids you to protest, For three score years and ten of steadfast ruling Then frankly, Ma’am, I feel you need a rest. Basil Ransome-Davies/Rudyard Kipling
Dame Lilybyt quene Lyke an evergrene And woundersly clene Of pacient mien For she is blest, I wene With her dyadem And her satyn hem, Her skyn of platynem; She is soverayne at courte Where folys disporte But yet hath she wyttes To defye gredy shyttes Over sevynty yere So lat us not jere But prayse with the quyll Her Majyste Ympossybyl. Bill Greenwell/John Skelton
This was not pre-ordained, and she was not Born for the crown, but yet the wayward king Threw majesty away, unwisely wed, Leaving Elizabeth to face the throne, And, too soon after that, t’assume the role Of monarch one grey February day. The
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