Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (123 page)

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 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.”

“‘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?”

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:

“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 VARIAZIÒNI

[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
!”

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!

“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.