Lyrics as verses or in system?

[Peter Chubb]

Hi,
  When I'm typesetting hymns, I'd like to be able to enter lyrics once
  only, so that they are between the staves of a system for the choir,
  and below a single melody line for the congregation.

  Is there an easy way to join syllables and strip durations,
  underscores, hyphens, and extenders from a lyricmode block to create
  a markup block?  

  So I could write something like this:

  verse = \lyricmode {
        this is a verse __
        it real -- ly could be worse
  }

  \score {
         <<
                 \new Staff \new Voice = tune { \music}
                 \new Lyrics \lyricsto tune \verse
         >>
  }

  \markup {
          \column {
                 \left-align {
                    \lyrics-to-markup \verse
                 }
          }
  }

where \lyrics-to-markup would (logically) convert the \lyricmode verse content 
to:
      "this is a verse"
      "it really could be worse"


--
Peter Chubb