Such a Curious Dream

It was 150 years ago this week that Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published. We all know of and have probably seen at least some of the seemingly limitless movies (animated and not), musicals, various editions, and merchandise (remember Tom Petty's video for "Don't Come Around Here No More"?: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=tom+petty+alice+in+wonderland&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001). It's also pretty much common knowledge that Carroll (né Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), a mathematically gifted but shy young man with a stammer and delicate health, wrote his classic and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, for one Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, where Carroll was sub-librarian: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150702-alice-in-wonderland-lewis-carroll-books/
   As with so many books, especially children's books, like Winnie-the-Pooh, for example, a great part of the success is due to superior illustrations, and when we think of Alice, we usually visualize her as she was originally drawn. Alice was illustrated by John Tenniel, whose drawings on paper were carved into woodblocks that were then made into electrotype, or metal, copies. The color plates in the 1911 edition were by Harry G. Theaker (Macmillan website with history, piece by Alice's great-granddaughter, great factoids, timeline, video): http://aliceinwonderland150.com/
   The poems we know best, Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter, are both from Looking Glass. That book ends with another poem, with which we're less familiar but that is, while not as whimsical, lovely in its own right:

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—
 
Long had paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?