Great Caesar's Ghost! Jabberwocky comes in Latin!

Something about election season brings out the Lewis Carroll in me. Maybe it's the general tone of nonsense issued forth from media, pundits, polls, politicians, and so on, or maybe it's just anxiety about not having a candidate I'm truly confident about available for any ballot, but I get all Jabberwocky when this time rolls around.

Needless to say, I was happy to be reminded that I had, in an almost-eighty-year-old copy of Carolyn Wells' Such Nonsense!, a Latin version of the classic nonsense verse (huh. classical classic, or, as Wells noted, "a classic classicised". heh), rendered by Hassard Dodgson (Carroll's uncle).

So here I offer it to you:

Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythæa Tova
Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo;
Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae,
Momiferique omnes exgrabuêre Rathi.

"Cave, Gaberbocchum moneo tibi, nate cavendum
(Unguibus ille rapit. Dentibus ille necat.)
Et fuge Jubbubum, quo non infestior ales,
Et Bandersnatcham, quae fremit usque, cave."

Ille autem gladium vorpalem cepit, et hostem
Manxonium longâ sedulitate petit;
Tum sub tumtummi requiescens arboris umbrâ
Stabat tranquillus, multa animo meditans.

Dum requiescebat meditans uffishia, monstrum
Praesens ecce! oculis cui fera flamma micat,
Ipse Gaberbocchus dumeta per horrida sifflans
Ibat, et horrendum burbuliabat iens!

Ter, quater, atque iterum cito vorpalissimus ensis
Snicsnaccans penitus viscera dissecuit.
Exanimum corpus linquens caput abstulit heros
Quocum galumphat multa, domumque redit.

"Tune Gaberbocchum potuisti, nate, necare?
Bemiscens puer! ad brachia nostra veni.
Oh! frabiusce dies! iterumque caloque calâque
Laetus eo! ut chortlet chortla superba senex."*

Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythæia Tova
Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo;
Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae,
Momiferique omnes exgrabuêre Rathi.




*I realize that the punctuation in this line is incorrect, and that the quotation marks should follow "Laetus eo!". I am posting it as it was printed in 1918. And finding those keyboard commands for spæcial charâcters is one hoot of a task! ;-)