Lunch Post: The Jabberwock [after]
I was Ben’s age when my amazing fourth grade teacher, Ms King, helped me memorize Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, which, amazingly, is still lodged in my brain.
`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, has 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.
I’ve always loved this poem. I used it for a theater audition once, and I also performed it in an Oral Interpreatation of Literature class in community college. I like your vision of the Jabber wok – so many ways could he be drawn, or rendered, in the icy dawn. . .
Fabulous.
My strongest memory of this is the Walt Disney School week-long field trip in 5th or 6th grade, when Cristin played the “boy”. Were you the father? It’s all such a blur. I just remember performing the Walrus & the Carpenter with Ben Crocker & I in the titular roles.