He too favored Alice with the following poem, which he assured her was written entirely for her amusement, and here it is, with enough of Lewis Carroll’s “nonsense” in it to let us know where it came from:
In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight:—
In spring, when woods are getting green,
I’ll try and tell you what I mean:
In summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song:
In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.
I sent a message to the fish:
I told them: “This is what I wish.”
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes’ answer was:
“We cannot do it, Sir, because——”
I sent to them again to say:
“It will be better to obey.”
The fishes answered, with a grin:
“Why, what a temper you are in!”
I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.
I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.
My heart went hop, my heart went thump:
I filled the kettle at the pump.
Then someone came to me and said:
“The little fishes are in bed.”
I said to him, I said it plain:
“Then you must wake them up again.”
I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud:
He said: “You needn’t shout so loud!”
And he was very proud and stiff:
He said: “I’d go and wake them, if——”
I took a corkscrew from the shelf;
I went to wake them up myself.
And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but——
With which highly satisfactory ending Humpty remarked:
“That’s all. Good-bye.”
Alice got up and held out her hand.
“Good-bye till we meet again,” she said, as cheerfully as she could.
“I shouldn’t know you if we did meet,” Humpty-Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake. “You’re so exactly like other people.”
The next square—the seventh—took Alice through the woods. Here she met some old friends: the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit of Wonderland fame, mixed in with a great many new beings, including the Lion and the Unicorn, who, as the old ballad tells us, “were fighting for the crown”; and then as the Red Queen had promised from the beginning, the White Knight—after a battle with the Red Knight who held Alice prisoner—took her in charge to guide her through the woods. Whoever has read the humorous and yet pathetic story of “Don Quixote” will see at once where Lewis Carroll found his gentle, valiant old White Knight and his horse, so like yet so unlike the famous steed Rosenante.
He, too, had a song for Alice, which he called “The Aged, Aged Man,” and which he sang to her, set to very mechancholy music. It is doubtful if Alice understood it for she wasn’t thinking of age, you see. She was only seven years and six months old, and probably paid no attention. She was thinking instead of the strange kindly smile of the knight, “the setting sun gleaming through his hair and shining on his armor in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her; the horse quietly moving about with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet, and the black shadows of the forest behind.” Certainly Lewis Carroll could paint a picture to remain with us always. The poem is rather too long to quote here, but the experiences of this “Aged, Aged Man” are well worth reading.
Alice was now hastening toward the end of her journey and events were tumbling over each other. She had reached the eighth square, where, oh, joy! a golden crown awaited her, also the Red Queen and the White Queen in whose company she traveled through the very stirring episodes of that very famous dinner party, when the candles on the table all grew up to the ceiling, and the glass bottles each took a pair of plates for wings, and forks for legs, and went fluttering in all directions. Everything was in the greatest confusion, and when the White Queen disappeared in the soup tureen, and the soup ladle began walking up the table toward Alice’s chair, she could stand it no longer. She jumped up “and seized the tablecloth with both hands; one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.” And then Alice began to shake the Red Queen as the cause of all the mischief.