Page:Carroll - Phantasmagoria and other poems (1869).djvu/75

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A SEA DIRGE.
63

What, keen? With such questions as 'When's high
tide?
Is shelling shrimps an improvement to tea?
Are donkeys adapted for Man to ride?'
Such are our thoughts by the Sea.

There is an insect that people avoid
(Whence is derived the verb 'to flee');
Where have you been by it most annoyed?
In lodgings by the Sea.

If you like coffee with sand for dregs,
A decided hint of salt in your tea,
And a fishy taste in the very eggs—
By all means choose the Sea.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat,
You prefer not a vestige of grass or tree,
And a chronic state of wet in your feet,
Then—I recommend the Sea.