How Doth the Little Crocodile -- Lewis Carroll

Guest poem sent in by Rajarshi Bandyopadhyay

(Poem #964) How Doth the Little Crocodile How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws! -- Lewis Carroll

Yesterday's 8-line Kipling poem ["The Idiot Boy" -m.] somehow reminded me
(maybe coz of the similar rhythm) of another famous 8-liner, also a parody
of something I don't quite remember. But then, when a parody is more
familiar than the original...says something about the parodist, doesn't it?

"How Doth the Little Crocodile" had the same effect on me as the Kipling
poem...it does not make me roll over in laughter...but just smile happily
for a long time appreciating the impact of the imagery.

-raj

[Martin adds]

Carroll was parodying Isaac Watts' "Against Idleness and Mischief", a rather
tedious and moralistic poem (and a prime example of what I call "Good Advice
for the Younger Generation") that well deserved it. As Raj said, when a
parody is more famous than the original it certainly does say something
about the parodist; in this case we can safely conclude that it says
something about the original too.

Links:

  [broken link] http://home.earthlink.net/~lfdean/carroll/parody/crocodile.html has a
  side-by-side printing of Carroll's parody and Watts' original

  Kipling's "Idiot Boy": Poem #962

  Some links on Carroll as parodist : Poem #935