No More Learning

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Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task,
Eager she wields her spade: yet loves as well
Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask
The tale he loves to tell.

Rude spirits of the seething outer strife,
Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright,
Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life,
Empty of all delight!

Chat on, sweet Maid, and rescue from annoy
Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled.
Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy,
The heart-love of a child!

Away, fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days--
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!




PREFACE.


If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense
were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem,
it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p. 18)

"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes. "

In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal
indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such
a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of
this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously
inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History--I will
take the more prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.

The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used
to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished,
and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it,
that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged
to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman
about it--he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in
pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been
able to understand--so it generally ended in its being fastened on,
anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman* used to stand by with tears in
his eyes: _he_ knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code,
"_No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm_," had been completed by the
Bellman himself with the words "_and the Man at the Helm shall speak to
no one_. " So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done
till the next varnishing day.
During these bewildering intervals the
ship usually sailed backwards.

[* This office was usually undertaken by the Boots, who found
in it a refuge from the Baker's constant complaints about the
insufficient blacking of his three pair of boots. ]

As this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock,
let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been
asked me, how to pronounce "slithy toves. " The "i" in "slithy" is long,
as in "writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves. "
Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in
"borrow. " I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in
"worry. " Such is Human Perversity.

This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard words in
that poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word
like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.

For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious. " Make up your
mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will
say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever
so little towards "fuming," you will say "fuming-furious;" if they
turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say
"furious-fuming;" but if you have that rarest of gifts, a perfectly
balanced mind, you will say "frumious. "

Supposing that, when Pistol uttered the well-known words--

"Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die! "

Justice Shallow had felt certain that it was either William or Richard,
but had not been able to settle which, so that he could not possibly say
either name before the other, can it be doubted that, rather than die,
he would have gasped out "Rilchiam!