A Verse Game

Have you guys ever played Bouts Rimés? (I did try a search, but you might have done it under a different name.) The idea is that one person gives a famous line of poetry, and the next has to cap it with a new ending. Some of my favorites have been:

To be or not to be, that is the question.
Can anyone offer an alternate suggestion?

Oh cuckoo! shall I call thee bird or but a wandering voice?
State the alternate preferred, with reasons for your choice.

Full fathom five thy father lies.
I pushed him. I apologize.

(None of these are my own.)

Anyway, there are a lot of people here who I think would be good at it.

Here’s one to start with:

Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt…

Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt,
I need a softer warmer pelt.

HEY…was that your HAND I just felt?

A rose by any other name
can’t cash its checks.

A Nat King Cole song, not literature, but one I was proud of nevertheless:

“I have often walked down this street before
But I’ve never picked things from the bins to eat before”.

True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,
'Twas three days dead, and boy he stank.

The boar’s head, as I understand,
is the rarest dish in all the land.
It’s just as good whether fresh or canned;
oh what a pity it’s been banned.

Wordsworth’s First Draft

I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Like a great big slice
Of American cheese.

Opps! Kind of missed the point of the game.

Okay, here’s my suggestion:

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,
And there within were dancing girls for Mongols all to come and see!

(If we can all get the basic premise of the game, this should be fun.)

Let us go then, you and I…

Let us go then, you and I,
And spread the laundry out to dry.

Once upon a midnight dreary…

I built a wicked-clever database query

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…

I’d rhyme with that if I thought I could
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

I had twenty beers; God how my head aches!

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

And the strangest ones are so much fun!
Can I compare thee to a summer’s day?

where the laundry fades and the colors run.

All that is gold does not glitter

No time on this one shall I fritter!

Listen, my children, and you shall hear…

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
A tale of ninety-nine bottles of beer!
A little learning is a dangerous thing …

A little learning is a dangerous thing …
But all that beer and your head will sing!

They bore him barefac’d on the bier…

They bore him barefac’d on the bier…
“Twas Anthrax!” they cried, frozen in fear

The past is such a curious creature…