The Jumblies
By Edward Lear
I
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, "You'll all be drowned!"
They called aloud, "Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
II
They sailed in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a ribbon by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,"
0 won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
III
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, "How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
IV
And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
"0 Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
V
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
VI
And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, "How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore";
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, "If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,--
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
--------
Another whimsical poem. I am in a whimsical mood; I have had a somewhat crazed muse yakking in my head all day while I was trying to Get Stuff Done. Know what happens when you tell Lupin that you're not writing any plot for his little story? He makes up for it by talking nonstop about sex. While pondering bits and pieces, I also wrote "After" for the
Okay, so the end result of this insanity? Is that I am so far behind on my friends list that, even reading only my "people I actually know in real life and people whose fic I would absolutely die if I missed" filter (and if I left you a comment in the last 6 hours, you should feel very complimented because it means I either love you, love your writing or love something else about your journal that makes it irresistible), I spent two hours and hit -200 and just had to stop. So do me a favor: if you posted anything in a community, or something huge happened in your life, or you posted something you're proud of, or something that makes you squee, or something that makes you think of me for any reason? Please will you leave me a comment and link here? Because I am feeling paradoxically lonely with not being able to keep up.
Kids started school two hours late today, which necessitated cancelling and rescheduling my dentist appointment. By the time I got them organized and was done showering and writing news bullets, it was afternoon...then younger son came home, had a fight with older son about a trade they'd made where one gave up a stuffed animal and the other gave up some pretend camping equipment, there were meltdowns, there was confusion, there was a cat hiding in a plastic play tent chewing on an afghan my mother in law crocheted. In other words it was a really typical day around here in which nothing successful got done.
In the evening I subjected my family to "The Man Trap" -- the first-ever aired episode of Star Trek, since I am reviewing the original series for Trek Nation. There were snippets in there which I have never seen before in two dozen rerun viewings, which made me squee, but boy am I going to get hate mail when I start talking about the sexual politics on this show. *g* And after that, we all watched Digging Into History on the History Channel, which was about...Pompeii! Because one can never have enough Vesuvius eruptions in a week, I guess, and I now know far more about pyroplastic flow than I ever imagined. Also, I really want to go to the Bay of Naples.
Dog prints in the snow. Am pretending they belong to Moony and Padfoot, because I'm not really sure what wolf prints in the snow would look like.
Tomorrow in theory is catch-up-on-everything day...no wait, that was today. Well, tomorrow will be that plus all the new stuff that has to be done!
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