(From “The Rectory Umbrella,”[4] 1849-50 with footnotes by the author)
The day was wet, the rain fell souse
Like jars of strawberry jam,[5] a
Sound was heard in the old hen house,
A beating of a hammer.
Of stalwart form, and visage warm,
Two youths were seen within it,
Splitting up an old tree into perches for their poultry
At a hundred strokes a minute.[6]
The work is done, the hen has taken
Possession of her nest and eggs,
Without a thought of eggs and bacon,[7]
(Or I am very much mistaken)
She turns over each shell,
To be sure that all’s well,
Looks into the straw
To see there’s no flaw,
Goes once round the house,[8]
Half afraid of a mouse,
Then sinks calmly to rest
On the top of her nest,
First doubling up each of her legs.
Time rolled away, and so did every shell,
“Small by degrees and beautifully less,”
As the sage mother with a powerful spell[9]
Forced each in turn its contents to “express,”[10]
But ah! “imperfect is expression,”
Some poet said, I don’t care who,
If you want to know you must go elsewhere,
One fact I can tell, if you’re willing to hear,
He never attended a Parliament Session,
For I’m sure that if he had ever been there,
Full quickly would he have changed his ideas,
With the hissings, the hootings, the groans and the cheers
And as to his name it is pretty clear
That is wasn’t me and it wasn’t you!
And so it fell upon a day,
(That is, it never rose again,)
A chick was found upon the hay,
Its little life had ebbed away,
No longer frolicsome and gay,
No longer could it run and play.
“And must we, chicken, must we part?”
Its master[11] cried with bursting heart,
And voice of agony and pain.
So one whose ticket’s marked “Return,”[12]
When to the lonely roadside station
He flies in fear and perturbation,
Thinks of his home--the hissing urn--
Then runs with flying hat and hair,
And, entering, finds to his despair
He’s missed the very latest train.[13]
Too long it were to tell of each conjecture,
Of chicken suicide and poultry victim,
The deadly frown, the stern and dreary lecture,
The timid guess, “perhaps some needle’s pricked him,”
The din of voice, the words both loud and many,
The sob, the tear, the sigh that none could smother,
Till all agreed, “a shilling to a penny
It killed itself, and we acquit the mother!”
Scarce was the verdict spoken,
When that still calm was broken,
A childish form hath burst into the throng,
With tears and looks of sadness,
That bring no news of gladness;
But tell too surely something hath gone wrong!
“The sight that I have come upon
The stoutest heart[14] would sicken,
That nasty hen has been and gone
And killed another chicken!”
[4] This was one of the best of the many “family” magazines with
the editing of which young Dodgson used to amuse himself during his
holidays. The whole of the matter was written in manuscript, in the
neat and formal handwriting characteristic of him. He was about
seventeen years old at the time he composed this poem, in which the
talent for nonsense rhyming of the future creator of the inimitable
“Jabberwocky” is already suggested.
[5] _I.e._, the jam without the jars; observe the beauty of this rhyme.
[6] At the rate of a stroke and two-thirds in a second.
[7] Unless the hen was a poacher, which is unlikely.
[8] The hen’s house.
[9] Beak and claw.
[10] Press out.
[11] Probably one of the two stalwart youths.
[12] The system of return tickets is an excellent one. People are
conveyed on particular days there and back for one fare.
[13] An additional vexation would be that his “Return” ticket would be
no use the next day.
[14] Perhaps even the bursting heart of its master.