You Are Old, Father William: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 01:08, 26 February 2010
You Are Old, Father William is a poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). It is recited by Alice in Chapter 5, "Advice from a Caterpillar" (Chapter 3 in the original manuscript, Alice's Adventures Under Ground). Alice informs the caterpillar that she has previously tried to repeat "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" and has had it all come wrong as "How Doth the Little Crocodile". The caterpillar asks her to repeat "You are old, Father William", and she recites.[1]
Text
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
"You are old," said the youth, "As I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
Pray, what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
"You are old," said the youth, "And your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
Provenance
Like most poems in Alice, the poem is a parody of a poem then well-known to children. This is a parody of Robert Southey's didactic poem "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them", originally published in 1799. Like the other poems parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice, this original poem is now mostly forgotten, and only the parody is remembered.[2] Carroll's parody "undermines the pious didacticism of Southey's original and gives Father William an eccentric vitality that rebounds upon his idiot questioner".[3] Martin Gardner calls it "one of the undisputed masterpieces of nonsense verse".[4] Since then, it has been parodied further, including more than 20 versions by 1886[5] a version by Charles Larcom Graves, a writer for Punch in 1889,[6] and "You are young, Kaiser William".[7][8]
Appearances
"Father William" was played by Sammy Davis, Jr. in the 1985 film.
Notes
- ^ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 4
- ^ Lewis Carroll; Martin Gardner; Sir John Tenniel (2000), Martin Gardner; Sir John Tenniel (eds.), The annotated Alice: Alice's adventures in Wonderland & Through the looking-glass (illustrated, annotated ed.), W. W. Norton & Company, p. 23, ISBN 9780393048476
- ^ Lewis Carroll; Hugh Haughton; John Tenniel (2003), Hugh Haughton (ed.), Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there (reissue, illustrated ed.), Penguin Classics, p. 307, ISBN 9780141439761
- ^ Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice: Definitive Edition, p. 49
- ^ Walter Hamilton (1886), Walter Hamilton; Walter Hamilton (eds.), Parodies of the works of English & American authors, Reeves & Turner, p. 156
- ^ Charles Larcom Graves (1889), The green above the red: more Blarney ballads, Swan Sonnenschein, p. 4
- ^ Frederic Lawrence Knowles, ed. (1902), A treasury of humorous poetry: being a compilation of witty, facetious, and satirical verse selected from the writings of British and American poets, D. Estes & company, p. 387
- ^ Mostyn Turtle Pigott (1896), Songs of a session: being a lyric record of Parliamentary doings during 1896, Innes, p. 13
External links
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, at Project Gutenberg
- Alice's Adventures Under Ground, at Project Gutenberg
