Lewis Carroll

PHANTASMAGORIA AND OTHER POEMS
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HIAWATHA’S PHOTOGRAPHING

[In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy.  Any fairly practised writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours together, in the easy running metre of ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’  Having, then, distinctly stated that I challenge no attention in the following little poem to its merely verbal jingle, I must beg the candid reader to confine his criticism to its treatment of the subject.]

 
 From his shoulder Hiawatha
 Took the camera of rosewood,
 Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
 Neatly put it all together.
 In its case it lay compactly,
 Folded into nearly nothing;
 
 But he opened out the hinges,
 Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
 Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
 Like a complicated figure
 In the Second Book of Euclid.
 
 This he perched upon a tripod -
 Crouched beneath its dusky cover -
 Stretched his hand, enforcing silence -
 Said, “Be motionless, I beg you!”
 Mystic, awful was the process.
 
 All the family in order
 Sat before him for their pictures:
 Each in turn, as he was taken,
 Volunteered his own suggestions,
 His ingenious suggestions.
 
 First the Governor, the Father:
 He suggested velvet curtains
 Looped about a massy pillar;
 And the corner of a table,
 Of a rosewood dining-table.
 He would hold a scroll of something,
 Hold it firmly in his left-hand;
 He would keep his right-hand buried
 (Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat;
 He would contemplate the distance
 With a look of pensive meaning,
 As of ducks that die ill tempests.
 
 Grand, heroic was the notion:
 Yet the picture failed entirely:
 Failed, because he moved a little,
 Moved, because he couldn’t help it.
 
 Next, his better half took courage;
 She would have her picture taken.
 She came dressed beyond description,
 Dressed in jewels and in satin
 Far too gorgeous for an empress.
 Gracefully she sat down sideways,
 With a simper scarcely human,
 Holding in her hand a bouquet
 Rather larger than a cabbage.
 All the while that she was sitting,
 Still the lady chattered, chattered,
 Like a monkey in the forest.
 “Am I sitting still?” she asked him.
 “Is my face enough in profile?
 Shall I hold the bouquet higher?
 Will it came into the picture?”
 And the picture failed completely.
 
 Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab:
 He suggested curves of beauty,
 Curves pervading all his figure,
 Which the eye might follow onward,
 Till they centered in the breast-pin,
 Centered in the golden breast-pin.
 He had learnt it all from Ruskin
 (Author of ‘The Stones of Venice,’
 ‘Seven Lamps of Architecture,’
 ‘Modern Painters,’ and some others);
 And perhaps he had not fully
 Understood his (...)
(......)