Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (114 page)

PHOTOGRAPHY EXTRAORDINARY

The Milk-and-Water School

Alas!
she would not hear my prayer!

Yet it were rash to tear my hair;

Disfigured, I should be less fair.

She was unwise, I may say blind;

Once she was lovingly inclined;

Some circumstance has changed her mind.

The Strong-Minded or Matter-of-Fact School

Well!
so my offer was no go!

She might do worse, I told her so;

She was a fool to answer “No.”

However, things are as they stood;

Nor would I have her if I could,

For there are plenty more as good.

The Spasmodic or German School

Firebrands and daggers!
hope hath fled!

To atoms dash the doubly dead!

My brain is fire—my heart is lead!

Her soul is flint, and what am I?

Scorch'd by her fierce, relentless eye,

Nothingness is my destiny!

LAYS OF MYSTERY, IMAGINATION, AND HUMOUR No.1

THE PALACE OF HUMBUG

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,

And each damp thing that creeps and crawls

Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

Faint odours of departed cheese,

Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,

Awoke the never-ending sneeze.

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,

Strange characters of woe and fear,

The humbugs of the social sphere.

One showed a vain and noisy prig,

That shouted empty words and big

At him that nodded in a wig.

And one, a dotard grim and gray,

Who wasteth childhood's happy day

In work more profitless than play.

Whose icy breast no pity warms,

Whose little victims sit in swarms,

And slowly sob on lower forms.

And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,

Where flowers are growing wild and rank,

Like weeds that fringe a poisoned tank.

All birds of evil omen there

Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,

The witless wanderer to snare.

The fatal Notes neglected fall,

No creature heeds the treacherous call,

For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.

The wandering phantom broke and fled,

Straightway I saw within my head

A vision of a ghostly bed,

Where lay two worn decrepit men,

The fictions of a lawyer's pen,

Who never more might breathe again.

The serving-man of Richard Roe

Wept, inarticulate with woe:

She wept, that waited on John Doe.

“Oh rouse,” I urged, “the waning sense

With tales of tangled evidence,

Of suit, demurrer, and defence.”

“Vain,” she replied, “such mockeries:

For morbid fancies, such as these,

No suits can suit, no plea can please.”

And bending o'er that man of straw,

She cried in grief and sudden awe,

Not inappropriately, “Law!”

The well-remembered voice he knew,

He smiled, he faintly muttered “Sue!”

(Her very name was legal too.)

The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:

A hurricane went raving by,

And swept the Vision from mine eye.

Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,

(The hangings, tape; the tape was red:)

'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!

Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,

What time it shudderingly recalls

That horrid dream of marble halls!

Oxford, 5.

THE MOCK TURTLE'S SONG

Beneath the waters of the sea

Are lobsters thick as thick can be—

They love to dance with you and me,

My own, my gentle Salmon!

Chorus

Salmon, come up!
Salmon, go down!

Salmon, come twist your tail around!

Of all the fishes of the sea

There's none so good as Salmon!

UPON THE LONELY MOOR

 [It is always interesting to ascertain the sources from which our great poets obtained their ideas: this motive has dictated the publication of the following: painful as its appearance must be to the admirers of Wordsworth and his poem of “Resolution and Independence.”]

I met an aged, aged man

Upon the lonely moor:

I knew I was a gentleman,

And he was but a boor.

So I stopped and roughly questioned him,

“Come, tell me how you live!”

But his words impressed my ear no more

Than if it were a sieve.

He said, “I look for soap-bubbles,

That lie among the wheat,

And bake them into mutton-pies,

And sell them in the street.

I sell them unto men,” he said,

“Who sail on stormy seas;

And that's the way I get my bread—

A trifle, if you please.”

But I was thinking of a way

To multiply by ten,

And always, in the answer, get

The question back again.

I did not hear a word he said,

But kicked that old man calm,

And said, “Come, tell me how you live!”

And pinched him in the arm.

His accents mild took up the tale:

He said, “I go my ways,

And when I find a mountain-rill,

I set it in a blaze.

And thence they make a stuff they call

Rowland's Macassar Oil;

But fourpence-halfpenny is all

They give me for my toil.”

But I was thinking of a plan

To paint one's gaiters green,

So much the colour of the grass

That they could ne'er be seen.

I gave his ear a sudden box,

And questioned him again,

And tweaked his grey and reverend locks,

And put him into pain.

He said, “I hunt for haddocks' eyes

Among the heather bright,

And work them into waistcoat-buttons

In the silent night.

And these I do not sell for gold,

Or coin of silver-mine,

But for a copper-halfpenny,

And that will purchase nine.

“I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,

Or set limed twigs for crabs;

I sometimes search the flowery knolls

For wheels of hansom cabs.

And that's the way” (he gave a wink)

“I get my living here,

And very gladly will I drink

Your Honour's health in beer.”

I heard him then, for I had just

Completed my design

To keep the Menai bridge from rust

By boiling it in wine.

I duly thanked him, ere I went,

For all his stories queer,

But chiefly for his kind intent

To drink my health in beer.

And now if e'er by chance I put

My fingers into glue,

Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot

Into a left-hand shoe;

Or if a statement I aver

Of which I am not sure,

I think of that strange wanderer

Upon the lonely moor.

MISS JONES

(This frolicsome verse was written for a medley of twenty-two tunes that ranged from “The Captain and His Whiskers” to “Rule Britannia.”)

'Tis a melancholy song, and it will not keep you long,

Tho I specs it will work upon your feelings very strong,

For the agonising moans of Miss Arabella Jones

Were warranted to melt the hearts of any paving stones.

Simon Smith was tall and slim, and she doted upon him,

But he always called her
Miss
Jones—he never got so far,

As to use her Christian name—it was too familiar.

When she called him “Simon dear” he pretended not to hear,

And she told her sister Susan he behaved extremely queer,

Who said, “Very right!
very right!
Shews his true affection.

If you'd prove your Simon's love follow my direction.

I'd certainly advise you just to write a simple letter,

And to tell him that the cold he kindly asked about is better.

And say that by the tanyard you will wait in loving hope,

At nine o'clock this evening if he's willing to elope

With his faithful Arabella.”

So she wrote it, & signed it, & sealed it, & sent it, & dressed herself out in her holiday things.

With bracelets & brooches, & earrings, & necklace, a watch, & an eyeglass, & diamond rings,

For man is a creature weak and impressible, thinks such a deal of appearance, my dear.

So she waited for her Simon beside the tanyard gate, regardless of the pieman, who hinted it was late.

Waiting for Simon, she coughed in the chilly night, until the tanner found her,

And kindly brought a light old coat to wrap around her.

She felt her cold was getting worse,

Yet still she fondly whispered, “Oh, take your time, my Simon, although I've waited long.

I do not fear my Simon dear will fail to come at last,

Although I know that long ago the time I named is past.

My Simon!
My Simon!
Oh, charming man!
Oh, charming man!

Dear Simon Smith, sweet Simon Smith.”

Oh, there goes the church-clock, the town-clock, the station-clock and there go the other clocks, they are all striking twelve!

Oh, Simon, it is getting late, it's very dull to sit and wait.

And really I'm in such a state, I hope you'll come at any rate, quite early in the morning, quite early in the morning.

Then with prancing bays & yellow chaise, we'll away to Gretna Green.

For when I am with my Simon Smith—oh, that common name!
Oh that vulgar name!

I shall never rest happy till he's changed that name, but when he has married me, maybe he'll love me to that degree, that he'll grant me my prayer

And will call himself “Clare”—

So she talked all alone, as she sat upon a stone,

Still hoping he would come and find her, and she started most unkimmon, when instead of darling “Simmon” 'twas a strange man that stood behind her,

Who civilly observed “Good evening, M'am,

I really am surprised to see that you're out here alone, for you must own from thieves you're not secure.

A watch, I see.
Pray lend it me (I hope the gold is pure).

And all those rings, & other things—Don't scream, you know, for long ago

The policeman off from his beat has gone.

In the kitchen—” “Oh, you desperate villain!
Oh, you treacherous thief!”

And these were the words of her anger and grief.

“When first to Simon Smith I gave my hand I never could have thought he would have acted half so mean as this,

And where's the new police?
Oh, Simon, Simon!
how could you treat your love so ill?”

They sit & chatter, they chatter with the cook, the guardians, so they're called, of public peace.

Through the tanyard was heard the dismal sound, “How on earth is it policemen never, never, never, can be found?”