“UNERRINGLY SHE PINNED IT DOWN.”
“To dine!” she sneered in acid tone.
“To bend thy being to a bone
Clothed in a radiance not its own!”
The tear-drop trickled to his chin:
There was a meaning in her grin
That made him feel on fire within.
“Term it not ‘radiance,’” said he:
“’Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea.”
And she “Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say ‘Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.’”
He moaned: he knew not what to say.
The thought “That I could get away!”
Strove with the thought “But I must stay.”
“To dine!” she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
“To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth!
“Say, can thy noble spirit stoop
To join the gormandising troop
Who find a solace in the soup?
“Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff.”
“Yet well-bred men,” he faintly said,
“Are not unwilling to be fed:
Nor are they well without the bread.”
Her visage scorched him ere she spoke:
“There are,” she said, “a kind of folk
Who have no horror of a joke.
“Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there:
“We grant them—there is no escape—
A sort of semi-human shape
Suggestive of the man-like Ape.”
“In all such theories,” said he,
“One fixed exception there must be.
That is, the Present Company.”
Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,
With random shaft had pierced the mark.
She felt that her defeat was plain,
Yet madly strove with might and main
To get the upper hand again.
Fixing her eyes upon the beach,
As though unconscious of his speech,
She said “Each gives to more than each.”
He could not answer yea or nay:
He faltered “Gifts may pass away.”
Yet knew not what he meant to say.
“If that be so,” she straight replied,
“Each heart with each doth coincide.
What boots it? For the world is wide.” |
“HE FALTERED ‘GIFTS MAY PASS AWAY.’”
“The world is but a Thought,” said he:
“The vast unfathomable sea
Is but a Notion—unto me.”
And darkly fell her answer dread
Upon his unresisting head,
Like half a hundredweight of lead.
“The Good and Great must ever shun
That reckless and abandoned one
Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.
“The man that smokes—that reads the Times—
That goes to Christmas Pantomimes—
Is capable of any crimes!”
He felt it was his turn to speak,
And, with a shamed and crimson cheek,
Moaned “This is harder than Bezique!”
But when she asked him “Wherefore so?”
He felt his very whiskers glow,
And frankly owned “I do not know.” |
“THIS IS HARDER THAN BEZIQUE!”
While, like broad waves of golden grain,
Or sunlit hues on cloistered pane,
His colour came and went again.
Pitying his obvious distress,
Yet with a tinge of bitterness,
She said “The More exceeds the Less.”
“A truth of such undoubted weight,”
He urged, “and so extreme in date,
It were superfluous to state.”
Roused into sudden passion, she
In tone of cold malignity:
“To others, yea: but not to thee.”
But when she saw him quail and quake,
And when he urged “For pity’s sake!”
Once more in gentle tone she spake.
“Thought in the mind doth still abide:
That is by Intellect supplied,
And within that Idea doth hide:
“And he, that yearns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow:
“And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought.”
So passed they on with even pace:
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face. |
The Second Voice.
They walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech
She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone.
She urged “No cheese is made of chalk”:
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk.
Her voice was very full and rich,
And, when at length she asked him “Which?”
It mounted to its highest pitch.
He a bewildered answer gave,
Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,
Lost in the echoes of the cave.
He answered her he knew not what:
Like shaft from bow at random shot,
He spoke, but she regarded not.
She waited not for his reply,
But with a downward leaden eye
Went on as if he were not by:
Sound argument and grave defence,
Strange questions raised on “Why?” and “Whence?”
And wildly tangled evidence.
When he, with racked and whirling brain,
Feebly implored her to explain,
She simply said it all again.
Wrenched with an agony intense,
He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,
And careless of all consequence:
“Mind—I believe—is Essence—Ent—
Abstract—that is—an Accident—
Which we—that is to say—I meant—”
When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed.
It needed not her calm reply:
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And he could neither fight nor fly,
While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
As might a cat a little bird. |
“HE SPAKE, NEGLECTING SOUND AND SENSE.”
Then, having wholly overthrown
His views, and stripped them to the bone,
Proceeded to unfold her own.
“Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss
Of other thoughts no thought but this,
Harmonious dews of sober bliss?
“What boots it? Shall his fevered eye
Through towering nothingness descry
The grisly phantom hurry by?
“And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;
See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
And redden in the dusky glare?
“The meadows breathing amber light,
The darkness toppling from the height,
The feathery train of granite Night?
“Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
Through the thick curtain of his tears
Catch glimpses of his earlier years, |
“SHALL MAN BE MAN?”
“And hear the sounds he knew of yore,
Old shufflings on the sanded floor,
Old knuckles tapping at the door?
“Yet still before him as he flies
One pallid form shall ever rise,
And, bodying forth in glassy eyes
“The vision of a vanished good,
Low peering through the tangled wood,
Shall freeze the current of his blood.”
Still from each fact, with skill uncouth
And savage rapture, like a tooth
She wrenched some slow reluctant truth.
Till, like a silent water-mill,
When summer suns have dried the rill,
She reached a full stop, and was still.
Dead calm succeeded to the fuss,
As when the loaded omnibus
Has reached the railway terminus:
When, for the tumult of the street,
Is heard the engine’s stifled beat,
The velvet tread of porters’ feet.
With glance that ever sought the ground,
She moved her lips without a sound,
And every now and then she frowned.
He gazed upon the sleeping sea,
And joyed in its tranquillity,
And in that silence dead, but she
To muse a little space did seem,
Then, like the echo of a dream,
Harped back upon her threadbare theme.
Still an attentive ear he lent
But could not fathom what she meant:
She was not deep, nor eloquent.
He marked the ripple on the sand:
The even swaying of her hand
Was all that he could understand.
He saw in dreams a drawing-room,
Where thirteen wretches sat in gloom,
Waiting—he thought he knew for whom:
He saw them drooping here and there,
Each feebly huddled on a chair,
In attitudes of blank despair:
Oysters were not more mute than they,
For all their brains were pumped away,
And they had nothing more to say—
Save one, who groaned “Three hours are gone!”
Who shrieked “We’ll wait no longer, John!
Tell them to set the dinner on!”
The vision passed: the ghosts were fled:
He saw once more that woman dread:
He heard once more the words she said.
He left her, and he turned aside:
He sat and watched the coming tide
Across the shores so newly dried. |
“HE SAT AND WATCHED THE COMING TIDE”
He wondered at the waters clear,
The breeze that whispered in his ear,
The billows heaving far and near,
And why he had so long preferred
To hang upon her every word:
“In truth,” he said, “it was absurd.” |
The Third Voice.
Not long this transport held its place:
Within a little moment’s space
Quick tears were raining down his face.
His heart stood still, aghast with fear;
A wordless voice, nor far nor near,
He seemed to hear and not to hear.
“Tears kindle not the doubtful spark.
If so, why not? Of this remark
The bearings are profoundly dark.”
“Her speech,” he said, “hath caused this pain.
Easier I count it to explain
The jargon of the howling main,
“Or, stretched beside some babbling brook,
To con, with inexpressive look,
An unintelligible book.”
Low spake the voice within his head,
In words imagined more than said,
Soundless as ghost’s intended tread:
“If thou art duller than before,
Why quittedst thou the voice of lore?
Why not endure, expecting more?”
“Rather than that,” he groaned aghast,
“I’d writhe in depths of cavern vast,
Some loathly vampire’s rich repast.” |
“HE GROANED AGHAST”
“’Twere hard,” it answered, “themes immense
To coop within the narrow fence
That rings thy scant intelligence.”
“Not so,” he urged, “nor once alone:
But there was something in her tone
That chilled me to the very bone.
“Her style was anything but clear,
And most unpleasantly severe;
Her epithets were very queer.
“And yet, so grand were her replies,
I could not choose but deem her wise;
I did not dare to criticise;
“Nor did I leave her, till she went
So deep in tangled argument
That all my powers of thought were spent.”
A little whisper inly slid,
“Yet truth is truth: you know you did.”
A little wink beneath the lid.
And, sickened with excess of dread,
Prone to the dust he bent his head,
And lay like one three-quarters dead.
The whisper left him—like a breeze
Lost in the depths of leafy trees—
Left him by no means at his ease.
Once more he weltered in despair,
With hands, through denser-matted hair,
More tightly clenched than then they were.
When, bathed in Dawn of living red,
Majestic frowned the mountain head,
“Tell me my fault,” was all he said.
When, at high Noon, the blazing sky
Scorched in his head each haggard eye,
Then keenest rose his weary cry.
And when at Eve the unpitying sun
Smiled grimly on the solemn fun,
“Alack,” he sighed, “what have I done?” |
“TORTURED, UNAIDED, AND ALONE”
But saddest, darkest was the sight,
When the cold grasp of leaden Night
Dashed him to earth, and held him tight.
Tortured, unaided, and alone,
Thunders were silence to his groan,
Bagpipes sweet music to its tone:
“What? Ever thus, in dismal round,
Shall Pain and Mystery profound
Pursue me like a sleepless hound,
“With crimson-dashed and eager jaws,
Me, still in ignorance of the cause,
Unknowing what I broke of laws?”
The whisper to his ear did seem
Like echoed flow of silent stream,
Or shadow of forgotten dream,
The whisper trembling in the wind:
“Her fate with thine was intertwined,”
So spake it in his inner mind: |
“A SCARED DULLARD, GIBBERING LOW”
“Each orbed on each a baleful star:
Each proved the other’s blight and bar:
Each unto each were best, most far:
“Yea, each to each was worse than foe:
Thou, a scared dullard, gibbering low,
And she, an avalanche of woe!” |
TÈMA CON VARIAZIÓNI.
[Why is it that Poetry has never yet been subjected to that process of
Dilution which has proved so advantageous to her sister-art Music? The
Diluter gives us first a few notes of some well-known Air, then a dozen
bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately:
thus saving the listener, if not from all risk of recognising the melody
at all, at least from the too-exciting transports which it might produce
in a more concentrated form. The process is termed “setting” by Composers,
and any one, that has ever experienced the emotion of being unexpectedly
set down in a heap of mortar, will recognise the truthfulness of this
happy phrase.
For truly, just as the genuine Epicure lingers lovingly over a morsel of
supreme Venison—whose every fibre seems to murmur “Excelsior!”—yet
swallows, ere returning to the toothsome dainty, great mouthfuls of
oatmeal-porridge and winkles: and just as the perfect Connoisseur in
Claret permits himself but one delicate sip, and then tosses off a pint or
more of boarding-school beer: so also——
I never loved a dear Gazelle—
Nor anything that cost me much:
High prices profit those who sell,
But why should I be fond of such?
To glad me with his soft black eye
My son comes trotting home from school;
He’s had a fight, but can’t tell why—
He always was a little fool!
But, when he came to know me well,
He kicked me out, her testy Sire:
And when I stained my hair, that Belle,
Might note the change, and thus admire
And love me, it was sure to dye
A muddy green or staring blue:
Whilst one might trace, with half an eye,
The still triumphant carrot through. |
A GAME OF FIVES.
Five little girls, of Five, Four, Three, Two, One:
Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.
Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six:
Sitting down to lessons—no more time for tricks.
Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven:
Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven!
Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen:
Each young man that calls, I say “Now tell me which you mean!” |
“NOW TELL ME WHICH YOU MEAN!”
Five dashing girls, the youngest Twenty-one:
But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?
Five showy girls—but Thirty is an age
When girls may be engaging, but they somehow don’t engage.
Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!
******
Five passé girls—Their age? Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam “careless bachelor” begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem “how the money goes”! |
POETA FIT, NON NASCITUR.
“How shall I be a poet?
How shall I write in rhyme?
You told me once ‘the very wish
Partook of the sublime.’
Then tell me how! Don’t put me off
With your ‘another time’!”
The old man smiled to see him,
To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
Enthusiastically;
And thought “There’s no hum-drum in him,
Nor any shilly-shally.”
“And would you be a poet
Before you’ve been to school?
Ah, well! I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic—
A very simple rule.
“For first you write a sentence,
And then you chop it small;
Then mix the bits, and sort them out
Just as they chance to fall:
The order of the phrases makes
No difference at all.
“Then, if you’d be impressive,
Remember what I say,
That abstract qualities begin
With capitals alway:
The True, the Good, the Beautiful—
Those are the things that pay!
“Next, when you are describing
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things
With a sort of mental squint.”
“For instance, if I wished, Sir,
Of mutton-pies to tell,
Should I say ‘dreams of fleecy flocks
Pent in a wheaten cell’?”
“Why, yes,” the old man said: “that phrase
Would answer very well.
“Then fourthly, there are epithets
That suit with any word—
As well as Harvey’s Reading Sauce
With fish, or flesh, or bird—
Of these, ‘wild,’ ‘lonely,’ ‘weary,’ ‘strange,’
Are much to be preferred.”
“And will it do, O will it do
To take them in a lump—
As ‘the wild man went his weary way
To a strange and lonely pump’?”
“Nay, nay! You must not hastily
To such conclusions jump.
“Such epithets, like pepper,
Give zest to what you write;
And, if you strew them sparely,
They whet the appetite:
But if you lay them on too thick,
You spoil the matter quite! |
“THE WILD MAN WENT HIS WEARY WAY”
“Last, as to the arrangement:
Your reader, you should show him,
Must take what information he
Can get, and look for no im-
mature disclosure of the drift
And purpose of your poem.
“Therefore, to test his patience—
How much he can endure—
Mention no places, names, or dates,
And evermore be sure
Throughout the poem to be found
Consistently obscure.
“First fix upon the limit
To which it shall extend:
Then fill it up with ‘Padding’
(Beg some of any friend):
Your great Sensation-stanza
You place towards the end.”
“And what is a Sensation,
Grandfather, tell me, pray?
I think I never heard the word
So used before to-day:
Be kind enough to mention one
‘Exempli gratiâ.’”
And the old man, looking sadly
Across the garden-lawn,
Where here and there a dew-drop
Yet glittered in the dawn,
Said “Go to the Adelphi,
And see the ‘Colleen Bawn.’
“The word is due to Boucicault—
The theory is his,
Where Life becomes a Spasm,
And History a Whiz:
If that is not Sensation,
I don’t know what it is.
“Now try your hand, ere Fancy
Have lost its present glow—”
“And then,” his grandson added,
“We’ll publish it, you know:
Green cloth—gold-lettered at the back—
In duodecimo!”
Then proudly smiled that old man
To see the eager lad
Rush madly for his pen and ink
And for his blotting-pad—
But, when he thought of publishing,
His face grew stern and sad. |
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK,
An Agony in Eight Fits.
PREFACE.
If—and the thing is wildly possible—the charge of writing nonsense were
ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it
would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p. 144)
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:”
In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal
indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a
deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this
poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in
it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History—I will take the more
prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.
The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to
have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished; and it
more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one
on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They knew it
was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it—he would
only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty
Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand—so it
generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The
helmsman[1] used to stand by with tears in his eyes: he knew it was all
wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, “No one shall speak to the Man at
the Helm,” had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words “and
the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.” So remonstrance was
impossible, and no steering could be done till the next varnishing day.
During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards.
As this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock,
let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been
asked me, how to pronounce “slithy toves.” The “i” in “slithy” is long, as
in “writhe”; and “toves” is pronounced so as to rhyme with “groves.”
Again, the first “o” in “borogoves” is pronounced like the “o” in
“borrow.” I have heard people try to give it the sound of the “o” in
“worry.” Such is Human Perversity.
This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard words in that
poem. Humpty-Dumpty’s theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a
portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.
For instance, take the two words “fuming” and “furious.” Make up your mind
that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say
first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so
little towards “fuming,” you will say “fuming-furious”; if they turn, by
even a hair’s breadth towards “furious,” you will say “furious-fuming”;
but if you have that rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will
say “frumious.”
Supposing that, when Pistol uttered the well-known words—
“Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!”
Justice Shallow had felt certain that it was either William or Richard,
but had not been able to settle which, so that he could not possibly say
either name before the other, can it be doubted that, rather than die, he
would have gasped out “Rilchiam!”
Fit the First.
THE LANDING.
“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”
The crew was complete: it included a Boots—
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods—
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes—
And a Broker, to value their goods. |
“SUPPORTING EACH MAN ON THE TOP OF THE TIDE”
A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share—
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.
There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck,
Though none of the sailors knew how.
There was one who was famed for the number of things
He forgot when he entered the ship:
His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings,
And the clothes he had bought for the trip.
He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,
With his name painted clearly on each:
But since he omitted to mention the fact,
They were all left behind on the beach.
The loss of his clothes hardly mattered, because
He had seven coats on when he came,
With three pair of boots—but the worst of it was
He had wholly forgotten his name. |
“HE HAD WHOLLY FORGOTTEN HIS NAME”
He would answer to “Hi!” or to any loud cry,
Such as “Fry me!” or “Fritter my wig!”
To “What-you-may-call-um!” or “What-was-his-name!”
But especially “Thing-um-a jig!”
While, for those who preferred a more forcible word,
He had different names from these:
His intimate friends called him “Candle-ends,”
And his enemies “Toasted-cheese.”
“His form is ungainly—his intellect small—”
(So the Bellman would often remark)—
“But his courage is perfect! And that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Snark.”
He would joke with hyænas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
“Just to keep up its spirits,” he said.
He came as a Baker: but owned, when too late—
And it drove the poor Bellman half-mad—
He could only bake Bride-cake—for which, I may state,
No materials were to be had.
The last of the crew needs especial remark,
Though he looked an incredible dunce:
He had just one idea—but, that one being “Snark,”
The good Bellman engaged him at once.
He came as a Butcher: but gravely declared,
When the ship had been sailing a week,
He could only kill Beavers. The Bellman looked scared,
And was almost too frightened to speak:
But at length he explained, in a tremulous tone,
There was only one Beaver on board;
And that was a tame one he had of his own,
Whose death would be deeply deplored.
The Beaver, who happened to hear the remark,
Protested, with tears in its eyes,
That not even the rapture of hunting the Snark
Could atone for that dismal surprise!
It strongly advised that the Butcher should be
Conveyed in a separate ship:
But the Bellman declared that would never agree
With the plans he had made for the trip: |
“THE BEAVER KEPT LOOKING THE OPPOSITE WAY”
Navigation was always a difficult art,
Though with only one ship and one bell:
And he feared he must really decline, for his part,
Undertaking another as well.
The Beaver’s best course was, no doubt, to procure
A second-hand dagger-proof coat—
So the Baker advised it—and next, to insure
Its life in some Office of note:
This the Banker suggested, and offered for hire
(On moderate terms), or for sale,
Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire,
And one Against Damage From Hail.
Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day,
Whenever the Butcher was by,
The Beaver kept looking the opposite way,
And appeared unaccountably shy. |
Fit the Second.
THE BELLMAN’S SPEECH.
The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies—
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face!
He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs! |
