In Competition No. 2885 you were invited to write a sonnet beginning ‘Shall I compare thee to a [trisyllable of your choice]’.

A competitor emailed to ask if I’d meant a single trisyllabic word or a three-syllable phrase. I meant the former but perhaps that wasn’t clear so I allowed both.

Objects of comparison ranged from ocelot to shaggy dog, from Shakespeare play to Theresa May. This was a phenomenally popular comp and produced a dazzling performance all round. I’ve squeezed in seven winners, who take £20 each, but there could have been many more — Ray Kelley, Philip Roe, Douglas G. Brown, Rob Stuart, Frank McDonald and Noel Petty, to mention just a few. Hugh King’s cockapoo scoops £25.
 

Shall I compare thee to a cockapoo?
Thou art less tousled, less importunate.
Thou dost not slaver when thy food is due,
Nor lick thy parts, nor shameless seek a mate,
Shaming thy master, in some publick place.
No moonward howls of thine my sleep disturb,
Although thy midnight yelp were no disgrace
Shouldst thou perchance wish not my will to curb.
Yet temper in our spanieled cur is meek
Compared to thine when things teats up have turned
As when I soused thy pod and thou didst wreak
Thy wrath in words that thou shouldst not have learned.
I go compare in vain, for by my troth,
Fair wife and motley mutt, I love you both.
Hugh King
 
Shall I compare thee to a stethoscope?
In truth I long to feel thee ’neath my vest,
Yet tracing o’er my skin to have a grope
Thy touch is icy on my fever’d breast.
Thou hast my heart, yet I can only guess
At thy inconstancy when we’re apart,
For other breasts have felt thy cold caress,
Methinks at times thou dost not give a fart.
In sickness and in health, when in my bed,
Thy trousers are the place thou keep’st thy brains.
Oh, why can’t thou just bend thine ear instead
And listen to the pounding in my veins?
My heartbeats gauge the virtue of my love,
Yet as thou’rt false, I’m giving thee the shove.
Sylvia Fairley
 
Shall I compare thee to a villanelle?
The form thou hast is fuller and more free,
Where lines are not rechanted like a spell,
Nor are thy rhymes confined to a and b.
Held fast within a convoluted shape
A poet’s thoughts will writhe and want for air;
There is from its constrictions no escape,
The worn refrain a measure of despair.
But thine expansive quatrains make a space
Where first ideas are given room to grow,
With rhymes not made to bind but interlace,
The more concerned with meaning than with show.
Much versed in matters of the mind and heart,
Thou art the prime exemplar of such art.
W.J. Webster
 
Shall I compare thee to a weekend comp,
That four-times monthly test of wit and verve
Retrieving sense from a linguistic swamp,
Always with niggling rubrics to observe?
As words, tropes, genres, parody, pastiche,
Collide like atoms in my fevered brain,
I’m mad Rimbaud delirious on hashish,
Till failure kills my confidence again.
Our courtship spikes, then sinks into a trough;
Though mine one week, the next thy back is turned.
Oh, who can track such a capricious heart,
Its current freakishly switched on and off?
Thus I, alternately embraced and spurned,
Aspire to solve the puzzle that thou art.
Basil Ransome-Davies
 
Shall I compare thee to a camembert?
You’re off-white, and your skin is slightly tough;
What’s more, what liquid insides! Don’t despair —
You’ve penicillin in you, right enough.
Some cheese stands still; but you are apt to run —
Perhaps that’s why your calories are fewer –
And connoisseurs prefer you warm. What fun!
You are what purists love — somewhat impure,
A treat that asks us ‘Hey there, want to risk it?’
You most appeal to those who have good taste;
One hint of you, you’ll always take the biscuit,
But none of you will ever go to waste.
While, where you go, men tremble on the brink —
Who does not know, you always make a stink?
Bill Greenwell
 
Shall I compare thee to a winter’s day?
With nature metaphors a verse contort?
I could some doggerel rhyme construct in play
Analogising it and you as ‘short’,
With ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ I’d think it such a lark
Congratulate my waggish self, so bold
To tell the truth chromatic, as — ‘you’re dark’ —
And, January child, you can be cold.
Yet all such dross of poetastic lies
Or pseudo-clever forced antithesis
Could not avail to win Erato’s prize.
I’ll use plain words instead and tell you this:
I think — that is — I don’t know what to say —
I mean, I love you, kind of, in a way.
Frank Upton
 
Shall I compare thee to a daffodil?
Your beauty reigns beyond the sigh of spring.
Though seasons drive the weather as they will,
And winter stuns us with its icy sting,
You undergo no change: your petals stay
Untouched and vernal-fresh. They never fade.
No weathering arrests your bright array
Or undermines the sparkle you’ve displayed.
The daffodil must share its darling form
With hosts of others garlanded in gilt,
But while you’re effervescent, lithe and warm,
They burst upon the scene and quickly wilt.
Yet now we’ve picked each other from the crowd
I’ll never wander lonely as a cloud.
Nick Grace

No. 2888: acrostic

You are invited to submit an acrostic poem in the style of a well-known poet, the first letters of each line spelling out the poet’s name or names (initials allowed). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 4 March.