In Competition No. 3326 you were invited to submit a nursery rhyme recast in the style of a well-known poet.

One of my favourite twists on a nursery rhyme is Lewis Carroll’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat’, the Mad Hatter’s party piece in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a teatray in the sky.

But ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ popped up only occasionally in the entry, outflanked by ‘Humpty Dumpty’, ‘Jack and Jill’ and, star of the show, ‘Three Blind Mice’. David Silverman leads the way with Milton’s version. He and his fellow winners take £25.

Of murine woe and grief agrarian
Sing, Heav’nly Muse, that mortals might behold
That triune troop of mice, devoid of light,
As, paw in paw, with stumbling steps and swift
They through the farmyard squeak their sightless way –
Oh dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon!
While they consider how their light is spent,
There stands their ruthless, rustic Nemesis.
Mad, merciless, she brandishes her blade –
As sharp as those that bore the Cherubim
That guard the gates of Eden’s Paradise –
Which thrice she strikes through their ill-fated tails.
Oh e’er was there as sorry sight as this?
Three meek and blameless creatures, wrought of God,
Aforetime sightless, tailless now, each mouse
So shortened by a cruel farmer’s spouse?

David Silverman/Milton’s ‘Three Blind Mice’

Half a league, half a league,
Ten thousand fighting men
Lining up side by side
Ready for battle, when
‘Upwards!’ the Old Duke cried –
Moving with measured stride
Marched the ten thousand.
Theirs not to reason why,
Reaching the top, the cry
‘Make the descent!’ and then
Ten thousand fighting men
Turned and marched down again.
Theirs but to do or die,
On the hill, high or low,
Halfway down, to and fro
Marched the ten thousand.

Sylvia Fairley/Tennyson’s ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’’

Young Humphrey had a system which
Had made him fabulously rich.
Until he had his sudden fall
He traded on a street called Wall.

He’d make a loan to folk who lack
The wherewithal to pay it back,
Then sell the debt to other men
Who’d pay, and sell it on again.

But then there came the fateful day
A bank he dealt with could not pay.
He had to sell his house and grounds
Which left him less than twenty pounds.

He tried to win back all his things
By gambling on the sport of kings.
But all the horses and their men
Could not set Humphrey up again.

Philip Roe/Hilaire Belloc’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’

High on a wall of British build, which far
O’ershadowed perches other eggs might boast,
Humpty exalted sat, by hubris raised
To that egg-eminence; nor did he dream
That such security could ever fail,
That walls might prove unstable, that he might
Fall, with results full catastrophical.
And when it happened, not a single horse
That in the royal stables hay consumed
Could aid him, nor their human counterparts,
The King’s own menfolk, could aught do but grieve
That neither cunning nor intelligence
Could piece together what in dreadful fracture
Was now but shelly fragments that did swim
Forlornly in a white and yolky lake.

George Simmers/Milton’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’

Nobody seemed to hear him, Jack Horner,
In his corner contentedly humming,
‘I’m such a good Christmas pie boy,
Not eating, but thumbing!’

Poor kid, he always loved Christmas,
He loved a plum,
And nobody ever understood that trick
With his thumb.

He was quiet all season in the corner
As carols were piping and drumming,
Jack with his Christmas pie,
Not eating, but thumbing.

Chris O’Carroll/Stevie Smith’s ‘Little Jack Horner’

I wonder by my troth what made thee scale
That perilous steep, a parable of life,
Thy journey Jack, alas, was doomed to fail,
Thy quest for Living Water, bound for strife.
Like Adam didst thou falter, trip and fall
And with thee Jill, thy partner, tumbled down,
Yet, just like Eve, she came not to thy call
Nor tended to thy bruis’d and broken crown.
Thy balm was sour vinegar, the same
As offer’d was to Christ when He did thirst,
A remedy that did relieve and tame
The pain and hurt with which thy fall was curs’d.
How sad it is that she who fell with thee
Did only grin to see thy plaster’d head.
God grant that, unlike them, we learn to be
More cautious on the perilous paths we tread.

Alan Millard/John Donne’s ‘Jack and Jill’

No. 3329: Festive villanelle

You are invited to submit a villanelle on a festive theme. Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 1 December. The early deadline is because of seasonal production schedules.