Carroll's parody 'undermines the pious didacticism of Southey's original and gives Father William an eccentric vitality that rebounds upon his idiot questioner'. Like the other poems parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice, this original poem is now mostly forgotten, and only the parody is remembered. Like most poems in Alice, the poem is a parody of a poem then well-known to children, Robert Southey's didactic poem ' The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them', originally published in 1799. Illustration for the poem by the hand of Lewis Carroll himself Said his father 'don't give yourself airs!ĭo you think I can listen all day to such stuff?īe off, or I'll kick you down stairs!' Provenance 'I have answered three questions, and that is enough,' Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose. 'You are old,' said the youth, 'one would hardly suppose 'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the law,Īnd the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw, Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak. 'You are old,' said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak 'In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,īy the use of this ointment-one shilling the box. Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door. 'You are old,' said the youth, 'as I mentioned before, 'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son,īut now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, 'You are old, Father William,' the young man said,Īnd yet you incessantly stand on your head.

The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll