A Galumphing We Go!

This Sunday, I got to watch the movie I've been waiting nearly a year for! It was everything I'd hoped it would be. Alice in Wonderland has always been one of my favourite books, and I spent a number of years in the fantasy that I'd one day find my own looking-glass to go through, or my own rabbit-hole to fall into. Though, in India..it would more than likely have been a manhole. Doubt anything pretty would have come out of that!

I was transported back to the time I first read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, completely mesmerized by the imagination and whimsy in something so innocuous as a book. To this day, it remains one of my favourites, and I've decided I will buy myself a copy to re-read. I wanted to share this verse from the sequel to the book. A friend of mine used the same poem for a typographic project. Sometimes, words speak a thousand pictures..

The 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.

*The illustration is by Sir John Tenniel and first published in 'Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There' by Lewis Carroll, 1871.
* Lewis Carroll is a Nom De Plume. The author's real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.