Spectator competition winners: Shakespeare on eyebrows

This time round you were asked to submit Shakespeare’s newly discovered ‘Woeful ballad to his mistress’ eyebrows’, as referred to by Jaques in As You Like It (‘…And then the lover,/ Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad/ Made to his mistress’ eyebrow…’). For the purposes of this challenge, a ballad could be any sort of poem (most of you wrote sonnets) and anachronisms were allowed. The prizewinners, in another fiercely contested week, take £20.

Basil Ransome-Davies What blessing crowns thy outward loveliness? A coiffed, enrapturing head of sable hair That blazes rank above the common press. Yet there is hair invisible elsewhere. Those secret, curling wisps that underlie Thy gorgeous panoply of silk and lace Intemperately appear to my mind’s eye, Prompting low stirrings in another place. Then as I spur my mind to higher things, I worship at thy temple, where twin arcs, As softly supple as the downy wings Of fledgling finches, flaunt the swooping marks Of grace and beauty both. Thereon I dwell, Love’s prisoner in his chaste, adoring cell.

George Simmers Suave eyebrow, can’t you guess how much I suffer? Last evening your sweet owner heard me praised, And straight away I saw you archly raised, Implying I’m the merest twerp or duffer.