27 MARCH 1971, Page 24

COMPETITION

No. 643: Long shot

Set by Robin Chase: In his 'Notebook' some time ago the 'Spectator' accounted for T. S. Eliot's lines:

Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree by suggesting that they were inspired by the poet mishearing the local word for one of the worts, `samphire', as 'sapphire', and that sam- phire 'could easily grow so as to clot the ancient axle-tree bedded in the mud of a disused track of an ancient house'. Competitors are asked to sug- gest some equally speculative explanation for any other poetic couplet. Limit, 150 words. Entries, marked 'Competition No. 643,' by 8 April,