| |
| 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. | 5 |
| And when the sieve turn’d round and round, | |
| And every one cried, “You ’ll be drown’d!” | |
| They call’d 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!” | 10 |
| 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. | |
| |
| They sail’d away in a sieve, they did, | 15 |
| In a sieve they sail’d 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, | 20 |
| “Oh! 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.” | |
| |
| The water it soon came in, it did; | 25 |
| The water it soon came in: | |
| So, to keep them dry, they wrapp’d their feet | |
| In a pinky paper all folded neat: | |
| And they fasten’d it down with a pin. | |
| And they pass’d the night in a crockery-jar; | 30 |
| 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.” | |
| |
| And all night long they sail’d away; | 35 |
| 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, | |
| “O Timballoo! how happy we are | 40 |
| 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.” | |
| |
| They sail’d to the Western Sea, they did,— | 45 |
| To a land all cover’d 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 jackdaws, | 50 |
| And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws, | |
| And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree, | |
| And no end of Stilton cheese: | |
| |
| And in twenty years they all came back,— | |
| In twenty years or more; | 55 |
| 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; | 60 |
| 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: | 65 |
| Their heads are green, and their hands are blue; | |
| And they went to sea in a sieve. | |
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