THE COMPLETE ALICE IN WONDERLAND ADVENTURES (With Original Illustrations). Льюис Кэрролл

three tongues together?

      Imperious Prima flashes forth

      Her edict to ‘begin it’:

      In gentler tone 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! a childish story take,

      And with a gentle hand

      Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined

      In Memory’s mystic band,

      Like pilgrim’s wither’d wreath of flowers

      Pluck’d in a far-off land.