The Message to the Fish

In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight—

In spring, when woods are getting green,
I’ll try and tell you what I mean.

In summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song:

In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.

I sent a message to the fish:
I told them “This is what I wish.”

The little fishes of the sea
They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes’ answer was
“We cannot do it, sir, because—”

I sent to them again to say
“It will be better to obey.”

The fishes answered, with a grin,
“Why, what a temper you are in!”

I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump;
I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then some one came to me, and said,
“The little fishes are in bed.”

I said to him, I said it plain,
“Then you must wake them up again.”

I said it very loud and clear;
I went and shouted in his ear.

But he was very stiff and proud;
He said, “You needn’t shout so loud!”

And he was very proud and stiff;
He said, “I’d go and wake them, if—”

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed, and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but—

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 25, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“The Message to the Fish” was first published in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Macmillan, 1872). About the poem, Angelika Zirker, an associate professor of English literature at the University of Tübingen, Germany, writes in her essay, “‘All about fishes’? The Riddle of Humpty Dumpty’s Song and Recursive Understanding in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,” published in Victorian Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Spring 2018), “Socrates’s remark on the riddling nature of poetry is taken literally by Lewis Carroll and becomes manifest in the character of Humpty Dumpty. [Alice is] cast in the role of an audience: she listens to the text and is supposed to be given an explanation of it, to understand it, and to write it down. The rest of the poem can be seen as the failure of that process, feared by Alice herself as she wonders if she ‘can remember it so long’: the poem that follows is incomplete, and she is therefore unable to grasp its meaning. We must assume that the poem as she hears it from Humpty Dumpty is the result of such a problematic recursive process of production, understanding, and transmission, especially since Humpty Dumpty himself twice says that he ‘repeat[s]’ it. Even the announced explication never follows: Humpty Dumpty suddenly ends the conversation and, shortly after that, falls from the wall (completing the action described in the nursery rhyme about him). The reader is, together with Alice, left in the dark as to the meaning of the poem.”