Explore "Hiawatha's Photographing" by Lewis Carroll on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
[In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight / attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practised / writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours / together, in the easy running metre of ‘The Song of Hiawatha. ' Having, / then, distinctly stated that I challenge no attention in the following / little poem to its merely verbal jingle, I must beg the candid reader to / confine his criticism to its treatment of the subject.]
/ FROM his shoulder Hiawatha / Took the camera of rosewood, / Made of sliding, folding rosewood; / Neatly put it all together. / In its case it lay compactly, / Folded into nearly nothing; / But he opened out the hinges, / Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, / Till it looked all squares and oblongs, / Like a complicated figure / In the Second Book of Euclid.