The Hunting of the Snark (an Agony, in Eight Fits) is quite often classified as a nonsense poem.
Utter nonsense, I say. Just because we don't understand each line (or even each word) of Lewis Carroll's poem doesn't mean that it's nonsense.
Besides, much of the poem is quite lucid.
Take, for example, the following lines from The Bellman's Speech (Fit the Second):
Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes :
A thing, as the Bellman
remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to
speak, "snarked."
The author indicates in his preface that the first line in this stanza could be used as perhaps the best evidence of his having written nonsense. And since he is "incapable of such a deed", he goes on to spend the next paragraph "simply explaining how it happened."
Now the bowsprit is clearly depicted in the upper left corner of the nearby image by Henry Holiday taken from the book's frontispiece. It's a spar extending past the bow of the ship, in this case, above the figurehead.
The situation was really quite simple:
The Bellman . . . used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to.
Makes perfect sense to me.* Undoubtedly the stern of their ship is just as plumb as their bow and shaped just as lovely. Our new Box II (a Bolger Tortoise) has (according to the plans) two transoms—the bow differs from the stern only by a few degrees and an inch or so.
So despite the fact that our little boat has never had its non-existent bowsprit mixed up with its homemade rudder, it would be very easy to have happen.
And so I join my voice with the author's in protesting the "nonsense" label. "Uffish" aside, the bowsprit incident alone very clearly shows the serious nature of the poem.
*Except the part about varnishing it once or twice a week: no one is that "morbidly sensitive about appearances"! Especially on my boats.
