Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (122 page)

MELANCHOLETTA

With saddest music all day long

She soothed her secret sorrow:

At night she sighed “I fear ’twas wrong

Such cheerful words to borrow.

Dearest, a sweeter, sadder song

I’ll sing to thee to-morrow.”

I thanked her, but I could not say

That I was glad to hear it:

I left the house at break of day,

And did not venture near it

Till time, I hoped, had worn away

Her grief, for nought could cheer it!

My dismal sister!  Couldst thou know

The wretched home thou keepest!

Thy brother, drowned in daily woe,

Is thankful when thou sleepest;

For if I laugh, however low,

When thou’rt awake, thou weepest!

I took my sister t’other day

(Excuse the slang expression)

To Sadler’s Wells to see the play

In hopes the new impression

Might in her thoughts, from grave to gay

Effect some slight digression.

I asked three gay young dogs from town

To join us in our folly,

Whose mirth, I thought, might serve to drown

My sister’s melancholy:

The lively Jones, the sportive Brown,

And Robinson the jolly.

The maid announced the meal in tones

That I myself had taught her,

Meant to allay my sister’s moans

Like oil on troubled water:

I rushed to Jones, the lively Jones,

And begged him to escort her.

Vainly he strove, with ready wit,

To joke about the weather -

To ventilate the last ‘
on dit
’ -

To quote the price of leather -

She groaned “Here I and Sorrow sit:

Let us lament together!”

I urged “You’re wasting time, you know:

Delay will spoil the venison.”

“My heart is wasted with my woe!

There is no rest - in Venice, on

The Bridge of Sighs!”
she quoted low

From Byron and from Tennyson.

I need not tell of soup and fish

In solemn silence swallowed,

The sobs that ushered in each dish,

And its departure followed,

Nor yet my suicidal wish

To
be
the cheese I hollowed.

Some desperate attempts were made

To start a conversation;

“Madam,” the sportive Brown essayed,

“Which kind of recreation,

Hunting or fishing, have you made

Your special occupation?”

Her lips curved downwards instantly,

As if of india-rubber.

“Hounds
in full cry
I like,” said she:

(Oh how I longed to snub her!)

“Of fish, a whale’s the one for me,

It is so full of blubber
!”

The night’s performance was “King John.”

“It’s dull,” she wept, “and so-so!”

Awhile I let her tears flow on,

She said they soothed her woe so!

At length the curtain rose upon

‘Bombastes Furioso.’

In vain we roared; in vain we tried

To rouse her into laughter:

Her pensive glances wandered wide

From orchestra to rafter -

“
Tier upon tier
!”
she said, and sighed;

And silence followed after.

A VALENTINE

[Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see him when he came, but didn’t seem to miss him if he stayed away.]

And cannot pleasures, while they last,

Be actual unless, when past,

They leave us shuddering and aghast,

With anguish smarting?

And cannot friends be firm and fast,

And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship’s call,

Calmly resign the little all

(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)

I have of gladness,

And lend my being to the thrall

Of gloom and sadness?

And think you that I should be dumb,

And full
dolorum omnium,

Excepting when
you
choose to come

And share my dinner?

At other times be sour and glum

And daily thinner?

Must he then only live to weep,

Who’d prove his friendship true and deep

By day a lonely shadow creep,

At night-time languish,

Oft raising in his broken sleep

The moan of anguish?

The lover, if for certain days

His fair one be denied his gaze,

Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,

But, wiser wooer,

He spends the time in writing lays,

And posts them to her.

And if the verse flow free and fast,

Till even the poet is aghast,

A touching Valentine at last

The post shall carry,

When thirteen days are gone and past

Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,

In desert waste or crowded street,

Perhaps before this week shall fleet,

Perhaps to-morrow.

I trust to find
your
heart the seat

Of wasting sorrow.

THE THREE VOICES

The First Voice

He trilled a carol fresh and free,

He laughed aloud for very glee:

There came a breeze from off the sea:

It passed athwart the glooming flat -

It fanned his forehead as he sat -

It lightly bore away his hat,

All to the feet of one who stood

Like maid enchanted in a wood,

Frowning as darkly as she could.

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,

Unerringly she pinned it down,

Right through the centre of the crown.

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,

Regardless of its battered rim,

She took it up and gave it him.

A while like one in dreams he stood,

Then faltered forth his gratitude

In words just short of being rude:

For it had lost its shape and shine,

And it had cost him four-and-nine,

And he was going out to dine.

“To dine!”
she sneered in acid tone.

“To bend thy being to a bone

Clothed in a radiance not its own!”

The tear-drop trickled to his chin:

There was a meaning in her grin

That made him feel on fire within.

“Term it not ‘radiance,’” said he:

“’Tis solid nutriment to me.

Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea.”

And she “Yea so?  Yet wherefore cease?

Let thy scant knowledge find increase.

Say ‘Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.’”

He moaned: he knew not what to say.

The thought “That I could get away!”

Strove with the thought “But I must stay.

“To dine!”
she shrieked in dragon-wrath.

“To swallow wines all foam and froth!

To simper at a table-cloth!

“Say, can thy noble spirit stoop

To join the gormandising troup

Who find a solace in the soup?

“Canst thou desire or pie or puff?

Thy well-bred manners were enough,

Without such gross material stuff.”

“Yet well-bred men,” he faintly said,

“Are not willing to be fed:

Nor are they well without the bread.”

Her visage scorched him ere she spoke:

“There are,” she said, “a kind of folk

Who have no horror of a joke.

“Such wretches live: they take their share

Of common earth and common air:

We come across them here and there:

“We grant them - there is no escape -

A sort of semi-human shape

Suggestive of the man-like Ape.”

“In all such theories,” said he,

“One fixed exception there must be.

That is, the Present Company.”

Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:

He, aiming blindly in the dark,

With random shaft had pierced the mark.

She felt that her defeat was plain,

Yet madly strove with might and main

To get the upper hand again.

Fixing her eyes upon the beach,

As though unconscious of his speech,

She said “Each gives to more than each.”

He could not answer yea or nay:

He faltered “Gifts may pass away.”

Yet knew not what he meant to say.

“If that be so,” she straight replied,

“Each heart with each doth coincide.

What boots it?  For the world is wide.”

“The world is but a Thought,” said he:

“The vast unfathomable sea

Is but a Notion - unto me.”

And darkly fell her answer dread

Upon his unresisting head,

Like half a hundredweight of lead.

“The Good and Great must ever shun

That reckless and abandoned one

Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.

“The man that smokes - that reads the
Times
-

That goes to Christmas Pantomimes -

Is capable of
any
crimes!”

He felt it was his turn to speak,

And, with a shamed and crimson cheek,

Moaned “This is harder than Bezique!”

But when she asked him “Wherefore so?”

He felt his very whiskers glow,

And frankly owned “I do not know.”

While, like broad waves of golden grain,

Or sunlit hues on cloistered pane,

His colour came and went again.

Pitying his obvious distress,

Yet with a tinge of bitterness,

She said “The More exceeds the Less.”

“A truth of such undoubted weight,”

He urged, “and so extreme in date,

It were superfluous to state.”

Roused into sudden passion, she

In tone of cold malignity:

“To others, yea: but not to thee.”

But when she saw him quail and quake,

And when he urged “For pity’s sake!”

Once more in gentle tones she spake.

“Thought in the mind doth still abide

That is by Intellect supplied,

And within that Idea doth hide:

“And he, that yearns the truth to know,

Still further inwardly may go,

And find Idea from Notion flow:

“And thus the chain, that sages sought,

Is to a glorious circle wrought,

For Notion hath its source in Thought.”

So passed they on with even pace:

Yet gradually one might trace

A shadow growing on his face.

The Second Voice

They walked beside the wave-worn beach;

Her tongue was very apt to teach,

And now and then he did beseech

She would abate her dulcet tone,

Because the talk was all her own,

And he was dull as any drone.

She urged “No cheese is made of chalk”:

And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,

Tuned to the footfall of a walk.

Her voice was very full and rich,

And, when at length she asked him “Which?”

It mounted to its highest pitch.

He a bewildered answer gave,

Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,

Lost in the echoes of the cave.

He answered her he knew not what:

Like shaft from bow at random shot,

He spoke, but she regarded not.

She waited not for his reply,

But with a downward leaden eye

Went on as if he were not by

Sound argument and grave defence,

Strange questions raised on “Why?”
and “Whence?”

And wildly tangled evidence.

When he, with racked and whirling brain,

Feebly implored her to explain,

She simply said it all again.

Wrenched with an agony intense,

He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,

And careless of all consequence:

“Mind - I believe - is Essence - Ent -

Abstract - that is - an Accident -

Which we - that is to say - I meant - ”

When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,

At length his speech was somewhat hushed,

She looked at him, and he was crushed.

It needed not her calm reply:

She fixed him with a stony eye,

And he could neither fight nor fly.

While she dissected, word by word,

His speech, half guessed at and half heard,

As might a cat a little bird.

Then, having wholly overthrown

His views, and stripped them to the bone,

Proceeded to unfold her own.

“Shall Man be Man?  And shall he miss

Of other thoughts no thought but this,

Harmonious dews of sober bliss?

“What boots it?  Shall his fevered eye

Through towering nothingness descry

The grisly phantom hurry by?

“And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;

See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare

And redden in the dusky glare?

“The meadows breathing amber light,

The darkness toppling from the height,

The feathery train of granite Night?

“Shall he, grown gray among his peers,

Through the thick curtain of his tears

Catch glimpses of his earlier years,

“And hear the sounds he knew of yore,

Old shufflings on the sanded floor,

Old knuckles tapping at the door?

“Yet still before him as he flies

One pallid form shall ever rise,

And, bodying forth in glassy eyes

“The vision of a vanished good,

Low peering through the tangled wood,

Shall freeze the current of his blood.”

Still from each fact, with skill uncouth

And savage rapture, like a tooth

She wrenched some slow reluctant truth.

Till, like a silent water-mill,

When summer suns have dried the rill,

She reached a full stop, and was still.

Dead calm succeeded to the fuss,

As when the loaded omnibus

Has reached the railway terminus:

When, for the tumult of the street,

Is heard the engine’s stifled beat,

The velvet tread of porters’ feet.

With glance that ever sought the ground,

She moved her lips without a sound,

And every now and then she frowned.

He gazed upon the sleeping sea,

And joyed in its tranquillity,

And in that silence dead, but she

To muse a little space did seem,

Then, like the echo of a dream,

Harked back upon her threadbare theme.

Still an attentive ear he lent

But could not fathom what she meant:

She was not deep, nor eloquent.

He marked the ripple on the sand:

The even swaying of her hand

Was all that he could understand.

He saw in dreams a drawing-room,

Where thirteen wretches sat in gloom,