Of course, the prize being a guinea made a lot of difference, and many unexpected chaps decided to write a prize poem, though most of these, when they sat down with pens and ink to do it, found such a thing quite beyond them in every way.
I myself--my name is Abbott--was one of these, and after reading a good many real poems of the War, which Mr. Fortescue, who was a great poet and much interested in the competition, kindly lent me, I found, on setting out to do it, that the difficulties were far too great. Rhymes are easy enough to get, in a way, but when you come to string the poem together, you generally find your rhymes aren’t solemn enough. I believe I could have written a screamily funny prize poem; but, of course, that wouldn’t have pleased the Doctor, or Peacock either, so it wasn’t any good wasting time being funny. For instance, I wrote the following poem in less than ten minutes:
The Hun, the Hun, the footling Hun, Most certainly doth take the bun.
And Blades and several other chaps said it was jolly good. But Blades, who had also had a shot or two on the quiet, was like me--he could only make comic poems, and the stanzas of his poem took the form of Limericks. He said he could invent them with the greatest ease--in class, or at prayers, or at meals, or going to bed, or getting up, or in his bath--in fact, at any time when he wasn’t playing football. He gave me an example, which seemed to me so frightfully good that I thought very likely Peacock would have given him a consolation prize. So he tried it on Peacock; but Mr. Peacock thought nothing of it, and said that was not at all the spirit of a prize poem, but belonged to the gutter-press, whatever that is. It ran like this:
The Kaiser set off for Paree As if it was only a spree, But old French’s Army, It soon knocked him barmy, And now he is melancolee. He next had a flutter at Nancy, Though doubtless a little bit chancy; But his men got a doing, With plenty more brewing, So he galloped off, saying, "Just fancy!"
There were hundreds more verses--in fact, you might say the whole history of the War as far as it had got; and I advised Blades to send it to _The Times_--to buck it up--or _Punch_, or something; but he wouldn’t, and when Peacock decided it was no use, he gave up writing it, so a good poem was lost, in my opinion.