Carroll parodies Longfellow

Today’s satire is one that I loved as an undergraduate… Lewis Carroll’s parody of Longfellow’s “Hiawatha”. Here are the first two stanzas. Click anywhere on them to see the rest:

Hiawatha’s Photographing
by Lewis Carroll

FROM his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.