“Jabberwocky” was included in English Writer, Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel, “Through the Looking Glass,” the sequel to his more pervasive title “Alice in Wonderland.” This poem includes a wide variety of words that were made up by Carroll, but it is these nonsense words that make the poem so fun, much like many of the poems by Dr. Seuss. The poem is written in a series of quatrains with the first three lines in iambic tetrameter and the final line in a mix of trochaic and iambic trimeter, with a basic ABAB rhyme scheme. In this poem, a tale is told of a hero who confronts the terror of all the land, the Jabberwock.
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.