Rhyme award, a fight in tune but no sword

  En del julklappar förärades med rim för att höja "spänningsnivån". Hos "Poetry with Blues" premieras andra sorters rim. Alla tre kandidaterna har blomtema och samtliga författare levde för ett tag sedan. Det är så att utmärkelserna Årets Metafor och Årets Rim kan vinnas av en dikt vars original publicerades för väldigt länge sedan. 

  Efter filmen får ni ytterligare två bidrag på rimmad vers.

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The Chinese Nightingale (three stanzas), by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
(from Poetry Magazine. February, 1915.)

“How, how,” he said. “Friend Chang,” I said, 
“San Francisco sleeps as the dead— 
Ended license, lust and play: 
Why do you iron the night away?

Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,         
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round. 
While the monster shadows glower and creep, 
What can be better for man than sleep?” 

“I will tell you a secret,” Chang replied; 
“My breast with vision is satisfied,         
And I see green trees and fluttering wings, 

And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings.”
Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan. 
“Pop, pop,” said the fire-crackers, “cra-cra-crack.” 
He lit a joss stick long and black.         
Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred; 
On his wrist appeared a gray small bird, 
And this was the song of the gray small bird: 
“Where is the princess, loved forever, 
Who made Chang first of the kings of men?”         

And the joss in the corner stirred again; 
And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke, 
Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke. 
It piled in a maze round the ironing-place, 
And there on the snowy table wide         
Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, 
With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face … 
Yet she put away all form and pride, 
And laid her glimmering veil aside 
With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.
...

***

My shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
(from A child's garden of verses. London : Longmans, Green, 1885.)

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.