For a few years now I've been singing my own final verse, without ever thinking of trying to seek out additional verses written by others. After reading the rest on this thread, which is admittedly several months old now, I still prefer my own verse (below)

Before I wrote my final verse, I used to sing it as I heard PPM perform it on a live recording, where they yell out "Present Tense!" and then repeat the chorus, LIVES by the sea... That was clearly their way of making it a happy ending... as if Puff got over it, and left his cave, so he still lives by the sea, and still frolics in the autumn mist...

But as SharonA mentioned above, I always felt it was a cruel ending for Puff to live alone forever in his cave, abandoned by his friend who grew up and stopped dreaming of him. I couldn't bear to keep telling the children (through the song) that they should grow up, like Jackie, and stop dreaming their childhood dreams, as if dreaming is reserved only for children.

As catspaw47 said above, "this song is about the loss of innocence" but do we really LOSE our innocence as we age, or do we just FORGET it? And as a song about losing innocence - sung to children - what should we teach them? What do they learn from the song?

The verses posted above about Jackie's child are cute, but I find them somewhat trite, and I dislike the reservation that only children are allowed to dream of Puff and play with him. I'm 31 and I still dream of dragons sometimes, and slip away to the magical lands of my imagination. I dislike that Jackie himself never returns to visit Puff in those verses: he only sends his child as an emissary. Why? Because he outgrew his imagination. And is that what we should teach our children through this song? Grow up and leave childish things behind... Bah! No! Of course there is a place for that, I mean we can't cling too tightly to naive innocent fantasies as adults, but adult life also still has a place for imagination and dreams.

Plus I considered that the adults in my audience were the ones who really paid attention to the lyrics, and thought about them. I don't think most of my child audiences really think about the song very much or what the story means - I certainly didn't until I was older - but it's my peer-aged friends who always ask me to sing it, and always listen to the words, and they even tend to praise me for remembering all the lyrics ... I think because I sing my own verse at the end, which they don't remember, because they only hear it from me, so they assume I remembered it (not that I wrote it myself) ... but I take it as a great compliment that my verse seems to fit that well that I have to tell them I wrote it myself.

Anyway, I wanted to remind the adults in my audience to keep dreaming too, so I wrote my added "happy ending" verse as follows...


I'll tell you a secret
If you listen close to me
In each every one of us
Is a bit of Jackie P.

He'll fly on dragons' wings
Forever 'til the end
And every day he laughs and sings
When he's with his best friend

Ohhhh

Puff the magic dragon
Still lives by the sea
And frolics in the Autumn mist
in a land called Honnilee

Puff the magic dragon
Still lives by the sea
And frolics in the Autumn mist
in a laaa-nnnd caaaaaaalled Hooon---niiii---leeeeee