"Stand up and repeat, 'Tis the voice of the sluggard,'" said the Gryphon.
"How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!" thought Alice. "I might just as well be at school at once." However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so full of the Lobster-Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was saying; and the words came very queer indeed:
"'Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the shark;
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound."
"That's different from what I used to say when I was a child," said the Gryphon.
"Well, I never heard it before," said the Mock Turtle, "but it sounds uncommon nonsense."
Alice said nothing: she had sat down with her face in her hands, wondering if anything would ever happen in a natural way again.
"I should like to have it explained," said the Mock Turtle.
"She can't explain it," said the Gryphon hastily, "Go on with the next verse."
"But about his toes?" the Mock Turtle persisted. "How could he turn them out with his nose, you know?"
"It's the first position in dancing," Alice said; but she was dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject.