'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
This is the first stanza of "Jabberwocky", a poem which Alice
discovers early in "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found
There".
I found a nice nineteenth century edition put online by the University
of Virginia Library:
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE
BY
LEWIS CARROLL
WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
JOHN TENNIEL.
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
1899
"Jabberwocky" is near the end of Chapter 1 and starts on page 28. The
first verse is repeated at the end of the poem on page 30.
A formal citation for the "brillig" verse would be:
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
Macmillan (1899) p 28
The whole of this edition is online at:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=CarGlas.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
Just to put it in context, this is what comes before the poem:
"There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat
watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious about him,
and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted
again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could
read, '--for it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to
herself.
It was like this.
YKCOWREBBAJ
sevot yhtils eht dna ,gillirb sawT'
ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
.ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA
She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought
struck her. 'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold
it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.'"
From the Gutenberg online text at:
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext91/lglass19.txt
I hope this gives you everything you need. Please don't hesitate to
ask if I can clarify anything.
Regards - Leli
search strategy:
I knew the poem and book already but had to search for an online
version of a print edition which you could cite with page numbers etc. |
