Our New Poem.

It's recommended in the book, What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know, ed. by E.D. Hirsch. It's in The Harp and Laurel Wreath, ed. by Laura M. Berquist twice--once in the selections for the Grammar stage child and once for Rhetoric.

We need something silly. Something funny. Something different.

Jabberwocky it is!

I have bad memories associated with this poem, however. I first saw it on an English test in Grade eight or nine. We were given a stanza and asked to pick out the parts of speech! The what? And what on Earth were all these strange words? What was this thing, anyway?

I remember the teacher was shocked. Had we never done parts of speech before? "Surely, you've been taught grammar?" she may have cried. It seems to me she may have missed the point. Most of us had never heard of Lewis Carroll!

JABBERWOCKY
By Lewis Carroll


‘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.

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)


PS: In the Rhetoric section, Berquist suggests parsing or diagramming the first verse.