Pagan prayer | The Spectator

In Competition No. 2470 you were invited to offer a votive poem to a pre-Christian deity.

Venus, take my votive glass:

Since I am not what I was,

What from this day I shall be,

Venus, let me never see.

Matthew Prior’s 18th-century prayer by a fading beauty is hard to beat, but Ezra Pound comes close with his unexpectedly charming poem, ‘The Lake Isle’ (is he having a go at Yeats?), which opens:

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of

thieves,

Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little

tobacco-shop…

The Golden Calf rewards its worshippers as follows: £25 each to five of the prizewinners printed below, and £30 to Virginia Price Evans, who prays as if she really means it.

Ishtar of Assyria,

Give me vengeance on that exiled band

Of Hebrews and send them back to their land —

They’re sowing hysteria.

My man has left me —

It’s all their fault, those wretched Jews,

For spreading their poison, the evil news

Of a god who’s holy.

Brainwashed he’s been —

They’ve persuaded him our adultery’s wrong

And their god (who’s invisible!) will help him be

strong.

So he’s left the scene.

Let me outlive him —

Give him a cancer, a bloody flux

And a painful death. His morality sucks!

I’ll never forgive him!

Virginia Price Evans

Bast, best of Nile divinities,

Hear thou my pleas!

Keep thou my cat, Ptib-mna-ptah,

Quite free of fleas.

Curb thou his habit, too, most blest

Bast-feline-head,

Of bringing offerings of mice

Not fully dead.

And make him leave, almighty Bast,

Birds on the wing,

And not upon my doorstep, mauled

But fluttering.

And when I reach the Afterworld

And judgment’s passed,

Please let Ptibbi attend me there.

Thank you, O Bast!

Brian Murdoch

Astarte, queen of heaven, hear and bless

This Fräulein, many moons your votaress.

You’ve measured out a hundred months for me

Since first I sensed your periodicity:

How easily could I prognosticate

Your visitation! You were never late.

But now I’m worried sick. Pray don’t extend my wait.

I don’t blame the unmarriageable youth

Who importuned me, for (to tell the truth)

In a short while my ardour was no less

Than his; nor was my unpreparedness.

Vouchsafe me now your blessing overdue,

And I’ll discharge my lifelong debt to you

By making an irrevocable vow

Of abstinence till I become a Frau,

And won’t need to entreat your grace, as I do now.

Ray Kelley

Patron of maidenhead,

You who supported her,

Wept with her howling

And shared in her pain —

Now that no longer she

Mourns her virginity,

Lost in expectancy,

Help her again!

Prop of parturients

(Strangest duality),

Cynophile Artemis,

Be with my bitch:

May she pup painlessly,

Proud in her progeny,

Pass through her labour with

Never a hitch.

Mary Holtby

Great Mother Frigg

(Your name I dig),

Please help me make it big

In the world of pop.

It can be done:

You made your son,

Bragi, number one,

Music’s god, the top.

If you play the game

I’ll do the same,

Lauding your holy name

At my every gig.

I pray for fame,

Put me in the frame,

Let the whole world acclaim

Frigging me, O Frigg!

G McIlraith

Invoked by Caesar’s heir at Actium,

You won for him his crowning accolade

By routing Cleopatra with her

Orientalising renegade;

And when that heir in gratitude raised up

A temple on the Palatine for you,

A Roman poet wrote a heartfelt

Prayer (a thing wise poets used to do),

Not asking you for wealth, for he preferred

Your gentler arts, and had designed a line

Well suited to your sacred lyre; and

Here it is (for it is also mine):

‘I pray for health to savour what I have,

And faculties intact, and grant to me,

Apollo, undegraded closing

Years, still graced by joy in poetry.’

Colin Sydenham

No. 2473: Delusions

‘He thought he saw an elephant/ That practised on a fife:/ He looked again, and found it was …’ So begins Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Mad Gardener’s Song’. Following this format and formula, you are invited to supply three stanzas (18 lines) which could aptly be titled ‘The Deluded Politician’. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2473’ by 7 December.