Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

‚Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

„Beware the Jabberwock, my son
   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
   The frumious Bandersnatch!“

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
   Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
   And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
   The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
   And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
   He went galumphing back.

„And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
   Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!“
   He chortled in his joy.

‚Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

I chose the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll because it is a nonsense poem I encountered when I first read his book Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and it has almost been like a constant companion ever since. Not only have Carroll’s works had a significant influence on pop culture ever since, the language he used is worth taking a closer look at in itself.
While the poem features a variety of words which do not (or did not) have any meaning on their own, it still manages to convey the warning that the Jabberwock is not necessarily a being you may want to encounter but also the joy that was felt after it was slain. In fact, some words like “chortle”, a blend of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’, have their origin in this poem and are still used today.

Wikipedia lists some possible interpretations of the nonsense words within the poem.

Different readers may pronounce some of these words in different ways. In the reading above Neil Gaiman pronounces “gyre” with an initial /dʒ/ like in “just” but it is just as conceivable to pronounce it with an initial /g/ like in “great”. While this word may appear to be just another nonsense word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary the first instance of this word with the meaning “to turn round, revolve, whirl, gyrate” dates back to 1598 and it derives from the latin gȳrus.

You can also have a closer look at the poem.