Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll

from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871

 

 

'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 hast 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.

  


Nice, eh? If you feel simultaneously excited and confused by the poem, your reaction is not dissimilar to Alice's.

"It seems very pretty", she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see, she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate--"

I discovered this poem as a young lad, deep within the pages of a book of dragon stories and poems. I was immediately hooked. For more information about this brilliant and captivating work, check out some of these:

Thanks to these sites, I've only just discovered that Lewis Carroll's real name was Charles Dodgson and that Terry Gilliam (yeah, from Monty Python) made a movie, Jabberwocky, in 1977. Guess what just got added to my DVD queue.

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