Poem: Keeping Score (On Winning)

Bouts-Rimes: Bouts-Rimes, or rhymed endings, first became popular in 18th century Britain and in the 19th century was a popular parlour game in which players were required to write stanzas with the rhyming words presented or follow each other with rhyming lines of verse. An amusing development in the game was to take a line from a well-known poem (preferably the first line) and add a rhyming line that deflated its seriousness. An example: I think that I shall never see . . . My contact lens fell in my tea. This poem consists of first lines of poems (not necessarily well known) accompanied by a rhyming line. The lines are numbered to correspond with the list of poems from which the first lines are drawn (which can be found at the bottom of the page).

KEEPING SCORE (ON WINNING)

1) Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
      Thy tales illuminate the night
2) How vainly men themselves amaze
      In the garden of their younger days
3) Budding floweret blushes at the light
      Where blooms abound, so that ye might
4) Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
      But as the night draws past the day
5) Against the swart magnolia's sheen
      The deck is dealt, new cards unseen
6) Good fortune is a giddy maid
      But once a visit overstayed
7) Alas, how easily things go wrong
      The joy is gone, lament the song
8) Ladies to this advice give heed
      To find a man who meets your need
9) It ain't the guns nor armament
      That makes a man more heaven-sent
10) A wise man holds himself in check
      Sees how the dealer deals the deck
11) There are veils that lift, there are bars that fall
      And should the winner take it all
12) There is a time, we know not when
      The cards will be shuffled and dealt again

* * *

The names and authors of the poems from which the first lines are drawn are:

1) William Blake, "The Tyger"
2) Andrew Marvell, "The Garden"
3) Thomas Chatterton, "Song of the Three Minstrels"
4) Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"
5) Hervey Allen, "Carolina Spring Song"
6) Heinrich Heine, translated by Louis Untermeyer, "Good Fortune"
7) George MacDonald, "Sweet Peril"
8) Author Unknown, "A Maxim Revised"
9) J. Mason Knox, "Co-Operation"
10) Scudder Middleton, "Wisdom"
11) T.W. Rolleston, "Song of Maelduin"
12) Dr. J. Addison Alexander, "The Hidden Line [The Destiny of Men]"