The other day, Granny J. and I were talking about the lost pastime of memorization. When we were children, the adults around us routinely memorzsed poetry and even passages from essays. People used to read aloud to one another, or quote poetry aloud while sitting on front porches drinking lemonade as light slid into darkness on long, humid, summer evenings. It seems that everyone in my family, eventually including myself, memorized Lewis Carroll's ..
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,
Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came wiffling 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
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 can't remember if this appears in Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, but to this day my Mom and I will cry Callooh! Callay! when we're feeling joyful, while the words galumping and beamish have a permanent place in our vocabularies.
