the shore,
The shore of the Bristol Channel,
A sea-green Porpoise carried away
His wrapper of scarlet flannel.
And when he came to observe his feet,
Formerly garnished with toes so neat,
His face at once became forlorn
On perceiving that all his toes were gone!

And nobody ever knew,
From that dark day to the present,
Whoso had taken the Pobble's toes,
In a manner so far from pleasant.
Whether the shrimps or crawfish gray,
Or crafty Mermaids stole them away--
Nobody knew; and nobody knows
How the Pobble was robbed of his twice five toes!

The Pobble who has no toes
Was placed in a friendly Bark,
And they rowed him back, and carried him up
To his Aunt Jobiska's Park.
And she made him a feast at his earnest wish
Of eggs and buttercups fried with fish;--
And she said,--"It's a fact the whole world knows,
That Pobbles are happier without their toes."

337

The two great classics among modern nonsense
books are Lewis Carroll's _Alice in Wonderland_
and _Through the Looking Glass_. They are in
prose with poems interspersed. "The Walrus and
the Carpenter," is from _Through the Looking
Glass_, while "A Strange Wild Song," is from
_Sylvie and Bruno_. This latter book never
achieved the success of its forerunners, though
it has some delightful passages, as in the case
of the poem given. Lewis Carroll was the
pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
(1832-1898), an English mathematician at Oxford
University.

THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER

"LEWIS CARROLL"

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be.
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky;
No birds were flying overhead--