"The Mad Gardener's Song" is a poem by

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...

that appears in his book '' Sylvie and Bruno'' (1889, 1893).

Structure

The poem consists of nine stanzas, each of six lines. Each stanza contains alternating lines of

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There ...

and

iambic trimeter The Iambic trimeter is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic units (each of two feet) per line. In ancient Greek poetry and Latin poetry, an iambic trimeter is a quantitative meter, in which a line consists of three iambic ''metra''. Eac ...

, with the trimetric lines rhyming with each other. Each verse is scattered around the novel ''Sylvie and Bruno'', with eight verses in the first volume and one in the second, ''Sylvie and Bruno Concluded''.

Text

Reception

In his ''Bright Dreams Journal'', Gary R. Hess called the poem "the only bright part of the book." In ''The Aesthetics of Children's Poetry: A Study of Children's Verse in English'', Katherine Wakely-Mulroney described the poem as "an incantatory, cyclical poem which reflects and even prefigures aspects of the prose narrative."

Adaptations

"The Mad Gardener's Song" featured on the BBC show '' Play School'' in 1981. Composer Stuart Findlay set "The Mad Gardener's Song" to

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

and piano in 1994.

Notes

External links

SYLVIE and BRUNO
on the

Gutenberg Project Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital librar ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mad Gardener's Song Poetry by Lewis Carroll 1889 poems 1893 poems Nonsense poetry