The cruelest month: My beamish boy

We’ve been wading through some heavy stuff during National Poetry Month. Death, love, hell, war; all the usual suspects. Now it’s time for something silly. Yes, of course I’m talking about Lewis Carroll.

“Jabberwocky” was one of the poems we read in the 10^th grade. Oh, we ranged wide in that class.

At the end of the module the test was that Mr. Sheinkopf would give us a quote from each of the poem, and we would have to identify it. For example, from “Ozymandias”, the line might have been “a shattered visage lies”; from “Lake Isle of Innisfree”, perhaps “peace comes dropping slow”.

For weeks, every night, I’d have my mom go through the poetry book and dish out lines at random and clock my answers. I was dreaming the things. I reckoned that “Jabberwocky” would be one of the shoo-ins, because just about every word in the bloomin’ thing is sui generis.

You want to know what line we got on the test? “He left it dead”. 

That’s right—about the only four words in sequence that you could have picked up at the bus stop. And I tanked it.

It’s been a whole lotta years since that class and I still feel rooked by that one.

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 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.

If you would like an interesting presentation of “Jabberwocky”, here’s a video done by the daughter of a former colleague.

If you’re at work, you might want to turn down the volume.