Jabberwocky
- `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
- Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
- All mimsy were the borogoves,
- And the mome raths outgrabe.
- "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
- The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
- Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
- The frumious Bandersnatch!"
- He took his vorpal sword in hand:
- Long time the manxome foe he sought --
- So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
- And stood awhile in thought.
- And, as in uffish thought he stood,
- The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
- Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
- And burbled as it came!
- One, two! One, two! And through and through
- The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
- He left it dead, and with its head
- He went galumphing back.
- "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
- Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
- O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
- He chortled in his joy.
- `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
- Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
- All mimsy were the borogoves,
- And the mome raths outgrabe.
- Lewis Carroll,
from
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,
1872.
Lewis Carroll,
pseudonym of CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON (b. Jan. 27, 1832, Daresbury,
Cheshire, Eng.--d. Jan. 14, 1898, Guildford, Surrey), English logician,
mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the
Looking-Glass (1871). His poem The Hunting of the Snark (1876) is
nonsense literature of the highest order.
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