Ballad: My Dream



The other night, from cares exempt,
I slept--and what d'you think I dreamt?
I dreamt that somehow I had come
To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom--

Where vice is virtue--virtue, vice:
Where nice is nasty--nasty, nice:
Where right is wrong and wrong is right--
Where white is black and black is white.

Where babies, much to their surprise,
Are born astonishingly wise;
With every Science on their lips,
And Art at all their finger-tips.

For, as their nurses dandle them
They crow binomial theorem,
With views (it seems absurd to us)
On differential calculus.

But though a babe, as I have said,
Is born with learning in his head,
He must forget it, if he can,