Last year during National Poetry Month I shared Lewis
Carroll’s “Jaberwocky”
with you. That one’s from Through the
Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. So this year I thought I’d give
you a couple of poems from Alice’s
Adventure in Wonderland.
Many of the poems in Alice
are parodies of serious or admonitory or instructive poems and songs current
when Lewis was writing the book. For example, Isaac Watts, an 18th
Century theologian, hymn writer and logician, was wont to serve up the likes of
“Against
Idleness and Mischief”, whose opening verse is:
How
doth the little busy bee
Improve
each shining hour,
And
gather honey all the day
From
every opening flower!
Now, I like Watts’s hymns fine, and “Joy to the World” is
one of my favorite Christmas carols. But this prissy stuff just erodes the
enamel off my teeth.
So, here’s Carroll’s send-up of it; which, by the way,
Alice recites when she’s just the teensiest bit loopy from all her
transformations:
“How Doth the Little Crocodile”
How
doth the little crocodile
Improve
his shining tail,
And
pour the waters of the Nile
On
every golden scale!
How
cheerfully he seems to grin,
How
neatly spread his claws,
And
welcome little fishes in
With
gently smiling jaws!
Then there’s his parody of James M. Sayles’s “Star of the Evening”,
sung by the Mock Turtle:
“Turtle Soup”
Beautiful Soup, so rich and
green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not
stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful
Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful
Soup!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
Beautiful Soup! Who cares for
fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for
two
Pennyworth only of beautiful
Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful
Soup?
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beauti—FUL SOUP!
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