Now in my trembling days I seek

All comfort to be found

In contemplation of the past;

When we rowed aground

At Godstow on the Thames' bank,

With my sweet Alice bound.

And there beneath a spreading elm

I told a tale of joy

To a child who smiled to hear

This older man's employ.

But now that girl is married to

Some fine and dashing boy.

And I am near my maker's house,

There to sup the chalice,

With one last tale to tell as time

Works my shape with malice;

Of how a child will become my

Automated Alice.

Now in these final days I seek

To find a future clime;

In which my Alice can escape

The radishes of time.

Faster, faster ticks the clock that

Turns to end this rhyme.

Alice was beginning to feel very drowsy from having nothing to do. How strange it was that doing absolutely nothing at all could make one feel so tired. She slumped down even deeper into her armchair. Alice was visiting her Great Aunt Ermintrude's house in Didsbury, Manchester; a frightful city in the North of England which was full of rain and smoke and noise and big factories making Heaven-knows-what. "I wonder how you do make Heaven-knows-what?" thought Alice to herself. "Perhaps they get the recipe from somebody who's only recently died?"

The thought of that made Alice shiver so much that she clutched at her doll ever so tightly! Her Great Aunt was a very strict old lady and she had given Alice this doll as a present with the words, "Alice, the doll looks just like you when you're in a tantrum." Alice thought that the doll looked nothing like her at all, despite the fact that her Great Aunt had sewn it an exact (if rather smaller) replica of Alice's favourite pinafore; the splendidly warm and red one she was currently wearing. Alice called the doll Celia, not really knowing the reason for her choice. Alice would often do things without knowing why, and this made her Great Aunt very angry indeed: "Alice, my dear," she would pronounce, "can't you make sense for once?"