in Uffish Thought I stood

There is no rhyme or reason to the things my brain decides it wants to think. Seriously! Driving in the car this morning I suddenly thought "If I were suddenly asked to recite a literary piece in front of an audience...ala Anne of Green Gables and "The Highwayman"...what do I have memorized that I could say?" Of course, the first thing that popped into my head was the one poem I know by heart...and love to recite at odd moments because...well, it is an odd poem. I speak of Jabberwocky of course! Written, and invented, by Lewis Carroll who loved to "play" with words...a man after my own heart! He invented words for the poem that have since been accepted as official, Oxford-English-Dictionary-approved words. Words like "chortle" (to chuckle gleefully) and "galumph" (to move along heavily and clumsily). So if you ever see me on a stage or television with a microphone shoved in my gob...you'll hear these words...

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble o'er 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 a 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

His 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!

Oh frabjous day! Callooh, Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble o'er the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

- Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There"

(my spellchecker just went into overload!)