The Mouse's Tale

by Lewis Carroll

"Mine is a long and a sad tale!" said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

"It is a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; "but why do you call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this:—

"Fury said to

a mouse, That

he met

in the

house,

'Let us

both go

to law:

I will

prosecute

you.—

Come, I'll

take no

denial;

We must

have a

trial:

For

really

this

morning

I've

nothing

to do.'

Said the

mouse to

the cur,

'Such a

trial,

dear sir,

With no

jury or

judge,

would be

wasting

our breath.'

'I'll be

judge,

I'll be

jury,'

Said

cunning

old Fury;

'I'll try

the whole

cause,

and

condemn

you

death.' "

"You are not attending!" said the Mouse to Alice, severely. "What are you thinking of?"

"I beg your pardon," said Alice very humbly, "you had got to the fifth bend, I think?"

"I had not!" cried the Mouse sharply and very angrily.

"A knot!" said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. "Oh, let me help to undo it!"

"I shall do nothing of the sort, said the Mouse, getting up and walking away. "You insult me by talking such nonsense!"

This poem, one of the most famous English examples of emblematic verse, appears in chapter three of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Its title bears the distinction of being a quadruple pun. Martin Gardner notes in The Annotated Alice that it may have been inspired by Tennyson, who "once told Carroll that he had dreamed a lengthy poem about fairies, which began with very long lines, then the lines got shorter and shorter until the poem ended with fifty or sixty lines of two syllables each. (Tennyson thought highly of the poem, but forgot it completely when he awoke.)"

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