" Well, though it seems
Beyond our dreams,"
Said Liddell to Scott
" We've really got
To the very end
All inked and penned
Blotless and fair
Without turning a hair
This sultry summer day, A.D
Eighteen hundred and forty-three

" I've often, I own
Belched many a moan
At undertaking it
And dreamt forsaking it
— Yes, on to Pi
When the end loomed nigh
And friends said: " You've as good as done, "
I almost wished we'd not begun
Even now, if people only knew
My sinkings, as we slowly drew
Along through Kappa, Lambda, Mu
They'd be concerned at my misgiving
And how I mused on a College living
Right down to Sigma
But feared a stigma
If I succumbed, and left old Donnegan
For weary freshmen's eyes to con again:
And how I often, often wondered
What could have led me to have blundered
So far away from sound theology
To dialects and etymology;
Words, accents not to be breathed by men
Of any country ever again!"
" My heart most failed
Indeed, quite quailed,"
Said Scott to Liddell
" Long ere the middle! . .
'Twas one wet dawn
When, slippers on
And a cold in the head anew
Gazing at Delta
I turned and felt a
Wish for bed anew
And to let supersedings
Of Passow's readings
In dialects go
" That German has read
More than we! " I said;
Yea, several times did I feel so! . .

" O that first morning, smiling bland
With sheets of foolscap, quills in hand
To write ╬▒╬▒atoj and ╬▒ag╬Àj
Followed by fifteen hundred pages
What nerve was ours
So to back our powers
Assured that we should reach ¤ë¤ëdhj
While there was breath left in our bodies!"
Liddell replied: " Well, that's past now;
The job's done, thank God, anyhow."

" And yet it's not,"
Considered Scott
" For we've to get
Subscribers yet
We must remember;
Yes; by September."

" O Lord; dismiss that. We'll succeed
Dinner is my immediate need
I feel as hollow as a fiddle
Working so many hours," said Liddell