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Rooks

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Edward Powys Mathers was born on August 28, 1892, in Forest Hill, London. He was educated at Loretto School and Trinity College, Oxford.

About Edward Powys Mathers

About this Poem

Edward Powys Mathers was better known to solvers by his puzzle-column pseudonym, Torquemada. Long before he became The Observer’s first cryptic crossword setter, Mathers was experimenting with a stranger form: the crossword in verse, where every clue arrives as a rhyming couplet instead of a plain definition. “Rooks” is one such puzzle from his 1925 collection Crosswords in Rhyme for Those of Riper Years (George Routledge and Sons).

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More by this poet

Six Love Songs

I
We are both silver sea-trout
And have risen to delicate flies on streams
And got away.
The young ferns balance on the wet earth
Like green smoke above a coal.
Let us watch the sun throw gold plates
Down to us through lake water

Edward Powys Mathers

1919

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Rooks

More by this poet

Six Love Songs

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