In Competition No. 3324 you were in-vited to submit nonsense verse on an autumnal theme.

W.J. Webster confessed that ‘sense kept breaking in’ to his entry, but the line between sense and nonsense is not always clear. As Anthony Burgess observed, in a review of Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Anthology of Nonsense Verse, Mr Grigson ‘wisely evades, in his preface, anything like a definition of nonsense. He knows that we will only know what nonsense is when we know the nature of sense. Nonsense is something we think we can recognise, just as we think we can recognise poetry, but there has to be an overlap with what we think we can recognise as sense.’

The winners below earn £25.

’Tis conkery and the glumptious drupes

are ruttling in the busky groove;

all slipshious are the treddly stoops

and the wild greetlings croove.

The scarvish dawns, the doofly nights,

the wrappit snaps of blainy chill:

beware the flewsome germlies’ flights

and the coffly Covigill.

Beware the boilsome gasalope,

its leakly poundsheds oozing thorms,

its greedish flames and whirling clope

and the emptish piggle gorms.

’Tis conkery and dreadly dark

enfolds with whoosh-mist and with blyre;

the newsly glumes and warrish crack

muttle in bankty ruptious quire.

D.A. Prince

I ate an Indian summer from a packet

And watch the treetops running out of cover

I had a patch of mud. It made a racket

Like a brambling ambling over to its lover

I held a bonfire bauble on my tip-tongue

And let it vanish into smoke and smoulder

Here is an apple. I would call it pip-sprung

Were I much younger, or if I were older

A conker has an eye for wax or polish

While brooks have many secrets – hear them babble

They handed me a solstice to demolish

But as it fell apart, I heard it gabble

The underfoot, it quoth, is toasty, crispin

But rather damp, so best to wear muldoons

My pockets filled – I put some will-of-wisp in

Fall out! I wish you happy harvest moons!

Bill Greenwell

Mistily, wistily, sunnily, gourdily,

Pensiverations on autumn explode.

Honey-filled hiveries, plumpiful fruiteries:

Preluminations for planning an ode.

Season meliferous, feelings versiferous,

Posily, rosily, where to begin?

Beesily busious, ergo odiferous;

Autumnly amorous thoughts in a spin.

Stanzily ruminal on things autuminal,

Mixity, maxity nullity comes.

Patiently pensical, gleanerly seasonal

Mind lubby jubby by bumblebee hums.

Clarificational, now meditational,

Huggledy cuddledy, musily kissed.

Valete visiting voices nonsensical:

My ode shall open with: Season of mists!

Frank McDonald

Dame Edith Sitwell in autumnal colours

Ascending a staircase one Octember Eve,

Bewailing the absence of fire-hearted lovers:

A windfall of gusts descant high in the eaves.

Ear-trumpet ochre and All Hallows scarlet,

Commingle with browns of innumerable hue;

The dress sheathing Edith glows fit for a starlet,

The wane toward winter all hers to construe.

Jangling stanzas and strange incantations

Issue from Edith like rivers in spate.

Autumn is fruitful; her ripened gestations

Emerge into air freshly crisped for the freight.

Bonfire to firework, up out through a skylight,

Edith ascending, declaiming her verse,

Meeting, arms beating the six o’clock twilight,

Winds fit to whisk her to winter and worse.

Adrian Fry

Beware the wombly wind that weaves

And whipples through the trumbling trees,

A glumping glip for raking leaves

And frimping anti-freeze.

A time for troles of tricky treaters;

Thermal thrumps and slothy socks,

Hoving up the humptious heaters 

Clumping back the clocks.

Cast aside your flimsy flabbers

While the skies are grimsome grey,

Date a doc for fluey jabbers,

Cry baloo belay.

Days truncated, darksome, drear,

View the vormidness with dread,

After autumn’s grume, prepare

For wintrous wodes ahead.

Sylvia Fairley

Because it was autumn, the leaves said farewell

…and leapt from their branches like Biles

artfully seeming to float as they fell

…into scattered, compostable piles,

and a bear, still awake, was seeking a cave

…to serve as its wintertime haven,

as a little girl’s mother said, ‘Don’t misbehave

…or I won’t let you dress like a raven,’

when out of the blue, or I should say the white,

…for the sky was as pale as a pearl,

a raven came soaring, a comical sight,

…for the bird was dressed up like a girl.

Robert Schechter

No. 3327: In short

You are invited to submit a rough resumé of the plot of a Shakespeare play such as might have been attempted by a well-known fictional character of your choice (please specify). Email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 22 November.