Yes, real good. We've all improved on Keats, I'd say. Here's another that is unfortunately not funny, but the rhymes are there:

You ask me which is better, hills or plains?
I think about this question night and day.
I've lived in both, from both I've moved away,
And both have left their own peculiar stains
Upon my soul, their joys and yes, their pains.
Perhaps I'd choose the hills from March to May,
For springtime is the ideal time to play
At rolling down the slopes, and when it rains
I love to hear the raindrops in the leaves.
But summer months belong to burning suns
And corn protected in its husky sheaves.
I can't decide. On drawing my last breath,
Someday I'll say I cherished all my runs
Through hills and plains. And loved them both to death.

Good one, Douglas! Clever.

Jerome - Thanks for your thoughtfulness, but no worries if you choose to submit your Mars poem. There could be other vehicles reaching Mars as I write! This bouts-rime challenge is really a game, after all. And it's a pretty engrossing activity, I would say.

I like the sentiments in your sonnet, which are intriguing, and reflect reality. So I wouldn't worry too much about the allusion to planet death. How Mars became such a desert is a matter of speculation, as well as whether there was or still is life there. For sure there were no intelligent Martians that turned the planet into an arid wasteland. (And no irrigation canals, which Percival Lowell imagined.) But Earth is, unfortunately, undergoing desertification. Here is an article I found about it:

http://www.greenfacts.org/en/desertification/index.htm

Thanks, Martin, generous of you. Thanks also for the interesting link. Had close contact with one or two Saharan ergs last year, which provided food for thought, despite the wettest English summer for 100 years.

Douglas, the Beverly Hill-Billies was shown over here for years, but a very long time ago. Has probably stuck in many people's minds because of the country and western style introduction to each episode. So most Oldie readers would have been exposed to it, I think. Ingenious one.

(I seem to be stuck on the animal kingdom)

xxxxxxxxxxFrog

Amphibians can’t live upon the plains,
Our skin needs constant moisture every day.
This pond’s our home; we don’t move far away,
For fear we’ll lose our iridescent stains.
The pond’s well-stocked; no need for hunger pains.
I’ll crunch a water-boatman or a May-
Fly for my lunch, and then it’s off to play,
Or bask beneath the downpour when it rains,
Or hop about on water-lily leaves,
Or shelter under them from burning suns.
The reeds and rushes grow in mighty sheaves;
I swim among them, coming up for breath
Or for a snack ... And so my story runs,
From egg to tadpole, then from frog to death.

Very neat indeed, Brian - the first really light-hearted one that flows without any sign of imposed rhymes. (Sp. typo on "iridescent".)

I agree, this is charming and inventive, Brian. I like that it is in first-person frog.

Hoo-oo-oo-a-a-a-a-a

In fields and forest, outback, plains,
what greater joy at break of day!
So have a laugh! Don’t shy away!
Your kookaburra laughter stains
the rising mist, makes light of pains
at mimicry and though it’s May,
though winter licks the skies, you play
among the eucalypts in rains
that drench the dusty wattle leaves.
You laugh through woodland winds and suns;
you cackle as combines bale the sheaves;
I laugh so hard…fair out of breath!
Then come – because time surely runs –
and kookaburra, laugh me to death.

.
.

Hi, all you clever bouts rimés-ers!

Here's the reply from Tessa Castro regarding variations on the words:

"Yes, that's fine as long as the rhyming element remains. The sense wasn't specified, but may and May are fine, and abstains is OK for stains. I think that Sun's instead of suns scrapes through too."

I'm SO pleased to see that Roger's "abstains" is permissible (but right from the start I said "I'm sure it will be").

There are some brilliant entries on this thread; goodness knows how you pick only four winners. Not an enviable task! (I do hope I can report, in due course, that several Sphereans have won :))

Jayne

I confess that I was expecting the magazine to go the strict constructionist route. When I read Roger's "abstains," I thought it was something that would shine as a repetend/variation in a villanelle or a sestina, for example, but that it wouldn't pass muster here. I'm happy to be proven wrong. Thanks for looking into it for us, Jayne.

Thanks, Jayne. I suppose we will now see a flood of new entries to take advantage of this new rule/loophole.

But I suppose that "planes" for "plains" would not fly?