Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/119

95 To beg a tale of breath too weak
 * To stir the tiniest feather!

Yet what can one poor voice avail
 * Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth
 * Her edict "to begin it"—

In gentler tones Secunda hopes
 * "There will be nonsense in it!"

While Tertia interrupts the tale
 * Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,
 * In fancy they pursue

The dream-child moving through a land
 * Of wonders wild and new,

In friendly chat with bird or beast—
 * And half believe it true.

And ever, as the story drained
 * The wells of fancy dry,

And faintly strove that weary one
 * To put the subject by,

"The rest next time"—"It is next time!"
 * The happy voices cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
 * Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out—
 * And now the tale is done,

And home we steer, a merry crew,
 * Beneath the setting sun.

"Alice" herself (Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves)