The sense of nonsense enables us not only to discern pure nonsense, but to consider intelligently nonsense of various degrees of purity. Absence of sense is not necessarily nonsense, any more than absence of justice is injustice.
UFFIA When sporgles spanned the floreate mead And cogwogs gleet upon the lea, Uffia gopped to meet her love Who smeeged upon the equat sea. Dately she walked aglost the sand; The boreal wind seet in her face; The moggling waves yalped at her feet; Pangwangling was her pace. _Harriet R. White_.
METAPHYSICS Why and Wherefore set out one day To hunt for a wild Negation. They agreed to meet at a cool retreat On the Point of Interrogation. But the night was dark and they missed their mark, And, driven well-nigh to distraction, They lost their ways in a murky maze Of utter abstruse abstraction. Then they took a boat and were soon afloat On a sea of Speculation, But the sea grew rough, and their boat, though tough, Was split into an Equation. As they floundered about in the waves of doubt Rose a fearful Hypothesis, Who gibbered with glee as they sank in the sea, And the last they saw was this: On a rock-bound reef of Unbelief There sat the wild Negation; Then they sank once more and were washed ashore At the Point of Interrogation. _Oliver Herford_.
_SYLVIE AND BRUNO_ He thought he saw a Banker's clerk Descending from the 'bus; He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. "If this should stay to dine," he said, "There won't be much for us!" He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage-Stamp. "You'd best be getting home," he said; "The nights are very damp!" He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head. "Poor thing," he said, "poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!" He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. "Were I to swallow this," he said, "I should be very ill!" He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. "The one thing I regret," he said, "Is that it cannot speak!" _Lewis Carroll_.
