Lewis Carroll

PHANTASMAGORIA AND OTHER POEMS
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CANTO VI - Dyscomfyture

 As one who strives a hill to climb,
 Who never climbed before:
 Who finds it, in a little time,
 Grow every moment less sublime,
 And votes the thing a bore:
 
 Yet, having once begun to try,
 Dares not desert his quest,
 But, climbing, ever keeps his eye
 On one small hut against the sky
 Wherein he hopes to rest:
 
 Who climbs till nerve and force are spent,
 With many a puff and pant:
 Who still, as rises the ascent,
 In language grows more violent,
 Although in breath more scant:
 
 Who, climbing, gains at length the place
 That crowns the upward track.
 And, entering with unsteady pace,
 Receives a buffet in the face
 That lands him on his back:
 
 And feels himself, like one in sleep,
 Glide swiftly down again,
 A helpless weight, from steep to steep,
 Till, with a headlong giddy sweep,
 He drops upon the plain -
 
 So I, that had resolved to bring
 Conviction to a ghost,
 And found it quite a different thing
 From any human arguing,
 Yet dared not quit my post
 
 But, keeping still the end in view
 To which I hoped to come,
 I strove to prove the matter true
 By putting everything I knew
 Into an axiom:
 
 Commencing every single phrase
 With ‘therefore’ or ‘because,’
 I blindly reeled, a hundred ways,
 About the syllogistic maze,
 Unconscious where I was.
 
 Quoth he “That’s regular clap-trap:
 Don’t bluster any more.
 Now do be cool and take a nap!
 Such a ridiculous old chap
 Was never seen before!
 
 “You’re like a man I used to meet,
 Who got one day so furious
 In arguing, the simple heat
 Scorched both his slippers off his feet!”
 I said “That’s very curious!”
 
 “Well, it is curious, I agree,
 And sounds perhaps like fibs:
 But still it’s true as true can be -
 As sure as your name’s Tibbs,” said he.
 I said “My name’s not Tibbs.”
 
 “Not Tibbs!” he cried - his tone became
 A shade or two less hearty -
 “Why, no,” said I.  “My proper name
 Is Tibbets - ”  “Tibbets?”  “Aye,
 the same.”
 “Why, then YOU’RE NOT THE PARTY!”
 
 With that he struck the board a blow
 That shivered half the glasses.
 “Why couldn’t you have told me so
 Three quarters of an hour ago,
 You prince of all the asses?
 
 “To walk four miles through mud and rain,
 To spend the night in smoking,
 And then to find that it’s in vain -
 And I’ve (...)
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