The Full Text of “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”
1When awful darkness and silence reign
2Over the great Gromboolian plain,
3Through the long, long wintry nights;—
4When the angry breakers roar
5As they beat on the rocky shore;—
6When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
7Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:—
8Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
9There moves what seems a fiery spark,
10A lonely spark with silvery rays
11Piercing the coal-black night,—
12A Meteor strange and bright:—
13Hither and thither the vision strays,
14A single lurid light.
15Slowly it wanders,—pauses,—creeps,—
16Anon it sparkles,—flashes and leaps;
17And ever as onward it gleaming goes
18A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
19And those who watch at that midnight hour
20From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
21Cry, as the wild light passes along,—
22"The Dong!—the Dong!
23"The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
24"The Dong! the Dong!
25"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"
26Long years ago
27The Dong was happy and gay,
28Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
29Who came to those shores one day.
30For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,—
31Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
32Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
33And the rocks are smooth and gray.
34And all the woods and the valleys rang
35With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,—
36"Far and few, far and few,
37Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
38Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
39And they went to sea in a sieve.
40Happily, happily passed those days!
41While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
42They danced in circlets all night long,
43To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
44In moonlight, shine, or shade.
45For day and night he was always there
46By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
47With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.
48Till the morning came of that hateful day
49When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
50And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
51Gazing—gazing for evermore,—
52Ever keeping his weary eyes on
53That pea-green sail on the far horizon,—
54Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
55As he sate all day on the grassy hill,—
56"Far and few, far and few,
57Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
58Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
59And they went to sea in a sieve.
60But when the sun was low in the West,
61The Dong arose and said;
62—"What little sense I once possessed
63Has quite gone out of my head!"—
64And since that day he wanders still
65By lake and forest, marsh and hills,
66Singing—"O somewhere, in valley or plain
67"Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
68"For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
69"Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!"
70Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
71Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
72And because by night he could not see,
73He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
74On the flowery plain that grows.
75And he wove him a wondrous Nose,—
76A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!
77Of vast proportions and painted red,
78And tied with cords to the back of his head.
79—In a hollow rounded space it ended
80With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
81All fenced about
82With a bandage stout
83To prevent the wind from blowing it out;—
84And with holes all round to send the light,
85In gleaming rays on the dismal night.
86And now each night, and all night long,
87Over those plains still roams the Dong;
88And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe
89You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe
90While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
91To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
92Lonely and wild—all night he goes,—
93The Dong with a luminous Nose!
94And all who watch at the midnight hour,
95From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
96Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
97Moving along through the dreary night,—
98"This is the hour when forth he goes,
99"The Dong with a luminous Nose!
100"Yonder—over the plain he goes;
101"He goes!
102"He goes;
103"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"
The Full Text of “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”
1When awful darkness and silence reign
2Over the great Gromboolian plain,
3Through the long, long wintry nights;—
4When the angry breakers roar
5As they beat on the rocky shore;—
6When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
7Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:—
8Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
9There moves what seems a fiery spark,
10A lonely spark with silvery rays
11Piercing the coal-black night,—
12A Meteor strange and bright:—
13Hither and thither the vision strays,
14A single lurid light.
15Slowly it wanders,—pauses,—creeps,—
16Anon it sparkles,—flashes and leaps;
17And ever as onward it gleaming goes
18A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
19And those who watch at that midnight hour
20From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
21Cry, as the wild light passes along,—
22"The Dong!—the Dong!
23"The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
24"The Dong! the Dong!
25"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"
26Long years ago
27The Dong was happy and gay,
28Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
29Who came to those shores one day.
30For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,—
31Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
32Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
33And the rocks are smooth and gray.
34And all the woods and the valleys rang
35With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,—
36"Far and few, far and few,
37Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
38Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
39And they went to sea in a sieve.
40Happily, happily passed those days!
41While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
42They danced in circlets all night long,
43To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
44In moonlight, shine, or shade.
45For day and night he was always there
46By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
47With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.
48Till the morning came of that hateful day
49When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
50And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
51Gazing—gazing for evermore,—
52Ever keeping his weary eyes on
53That pea-green sail on the far horizon,—
54Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
55As he sate all day on the grassy hill,—
56"Far and few, far and few,
57Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
58Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
59And they went to sea in a sieve.
60But when the sun was low in the West,
61The Dong arose and said;
62—"What little sense I once possessed
63Has quite gone out of my head!"—
64And since that day he wanders still
65By lake and forest, marsh and hills,
66Singing—"O somewhere, in valley or plain
67"Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
68"For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
69"Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!"
70Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
71Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
72And because by night he could not see,
73He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
74On the flowery plain that grows.
75And he wove him a wondrous Nose,—
76A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!
77Of vast proportions and painted red,
78And tied with cords to the back of his head.
79—In a hollow rounded space it ended
80With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
81All fenced about
82With a bandage stout
83To prevent the wind from blowing it out;—
84And with holes all round to send the light,
85In gleaming rays on the dismal night.
86And now each night, and all night long,
87Over those plains still roams the Dong;
88And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe
89You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe
90While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
91To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
92Lonely and wild—all night he goes,—
93The Dong with a luminous Nose!
94And all who watch at the midnight hour,
95From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
96Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
97Moving along through the dreary night,—
98"This is the hour when forth he goes,
99"The Dong with a luminous Nose!
100"Yonder—over the plain he goes;
101"He goes!
102"He goes;
103"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Introduction
-
"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" is one of Edward Lear's melancholy nonsense poems. It tells the tale of how a lonely fellow known as the Dong came to construct his famous nose, a huge bright-red prosthesis with a lantern inside. By the light of this nose-lamp, the Dong wanders through the night, searching ceaselessly for his beloved "Jumbly Girl"—a visitor from foreign parts whom he loved and lost. A sequel to Lear's earlier and cheerier poem "The Jumblies," this poem was first collected in the 1877 book Laughable Lyrics.
-
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Summary
-
When dreadful darkness and silence spread over the great Gromboolian plain in the long winter nights; when the angry waves break loudly against the rocky coast; when the thunderclouds loom gloomily over the high hills of the Chankly Bore:
On such terrible nights, what seems to be a glowing fleck of fire shooting out silvery beams of light moves through the blackness. It looks like a peculiar comet, wandering here and there, one harsh bright light all on its own.
It wanders slowly, stopping for a moment, creeping forward—then sparkling and jumping. Always moving forward, it casts its light over the trunks of the Bong-trees. The people who look out into the dark of these nights from their halls, their balconies, or their towers say, as the light goes past: "It's the Dong! The Dong is wandering through the forest! It's the Dong with the glowing nose!"
A long, long time ago, the Dong was a happy, cheerful guy—until he fell in love with one of the Jumblies, the adventurers who landed in his country one day. The Jumblies sailed in a sieve, landing as evening fell near the Zemmery Fidd, the place on the coast where the Oblong Oysters live among smooth, grey rocks. All day and all night, the forests and hills echoed the Jumblies' song: "The Jumblies live far, far away. They have green heads and blue hands, and they went sailing in a sieve."
Oh, what a happy time it was while the Jumblies stayed in the Dong's land. They danced in circles all night while the Dong played a melancholy tune on his pipe, weaving through moonlight and shadow. All day and all night, the Dong stayed near his beloved Jumbly Girl, whose hands were sky-blue and whose hair was sea-green. That's how it went until the terrible morning that the Jumblies got back in their sieve and sailed away, leaving the Dong alone on the shore, gazing ceaselessly at the pea-green sail of the sieve as it disappeared over the horizon. As he sat on the hill and watched, he kept on singing the Jumblies' song: "The Jumblies live far, far away. They have green heads and blue hands, and they went sailing in a sieve."
But when the sun began to set, the Dong finally got up and declared: "The little sanity I once had is gone!" Since that day, he wanders through the wilderness, singing: "Oh, somewhere, in the valleys or on the plains, I might one day find my Jumbly Girl again! I'll look for her by the lakes and the seashore until I find her!"
Playing his silvery pipe, he looks for his Jumbly Girl to this day. Since he couldn't see well enough to search at night, he collected the bark of the Twangum Tree that grows on the flowery plains. Out of this bark he wove himself a strange and wonderful nose. It was huge and painted bright red; he tied it around his face with strings. At its tip was a hollow sphere in which a glowing lantern hung, wrapped in a sturdy bandage to keep the wind from blowing it out. The nose was pierced with many holes to allow its light to illuminate the dark nights.
Now, every night, the Dong wanders over the plains. Through the squeals of chimpanzees and marsh birds, you can hear him playing his melancholy pipe while he searches fruitlessly for his Jumbly Girl. Lonely and crazed, the Dong with a Luminous Nose wanders all night long. And everyone who watches him from their halls, their balconies, or their tall towers says, as they watch the comet of his nose moving through the darkness: "This is the time when the Dong with the glowing nose goes wandering! Over there—across the plains he goes, the Dong with the glowing nose!"
-
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Themes
-
The Transformative Pain of Heartbreak
"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" is one of the most melancholy of Edward Lear's nonsense poems. It tells the tale of the Dong, a creature who lives in a lonely, storm-wracked land of rocky shores and dark hills. The Dong falls in love with a visiting "Jumbly Girl," one of a crew of adventurous creatures who have sailed to the Dong's land in a sieve (that is, a strainer or a colander—full of holes, it's an unlikely vessel!). But their relationship is short-lived: she and her fellow Jumblies sail away again, and the Dong is left to console himself as best he can. Using bark and fire, he constructs a fabulous artificial nose that holds a glowing lantern; by its light, he wanders the night seeking his Jumbly Girl forever, until he's known as the legendary "Dong with a luminous Nose." Heartbreak and loneliness, in this poem, are transformative, leaving lasting marks on the Dong's mind, identity, and character.
When the Jumblies depart and the Dong is left all alone, he watches, devastated, as the "pea-green sail" of his Jumbly Girl's ship disappears over the "far horizon." His heart broken, the Dong at last declares that "What little sense I once possessed / Has quite gone out of my head." In other words, he's out of his wits with grief, a changed man.
He marks that inner change with an outer one. Though he's watched his beloved's "pea-green sail" disappearing over the "far horizon" and knows she's nowhere to be found in his own land, he behaves as if he might find her if only he searches hard enough, constructing a magnificent artificial nose-lantern with which to carry out his search. This nose—painted bright red, containing a "luminous lamp," and "tied with cords to the back of his head"—changes not just his appearance, but his identity itself. It's so impressive and distinctive a work that "those who watch" as the Dong wanders past start to think of him as "the Dong with a luminous Nose."
The Dong's broken heart, in other words, changes him inside and out, altering how he thinks, how he looks, how he behaves, and how the world perceives him. Grief and loneliness make him a marked man and an outsider—legendary, perhaps, but always standing apart from the people who cry "the wandering Dong through the forest goes!" as he passes.
Some readers have even seen the Dong's tale as a metaphor for the plight of the artist (and in particular the plight of Edward Lear himself, who suffered terribly from loneliness and unrequited love). The Dong's grief plants the unlikely seeds of creativity, making him into a notable nose-sculptor even as it cuts him off from the rest of the world. Alas, as Lear knew well, art might be a creative and even transformative response to heartbreak, but it's no cure.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”
-
Lines 1-7
When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights;—
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;—
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:—"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" begins with a scene that might have come from a gothic novel. The speaker—more a narrator, really, an omniscient third-person storyteller—paints a picture of a landscape where "awful darkness and silence reign" over a "rocky shore" dashed by the "breakers" (the waves, that is). Nearby, thunderclouds gather over high hills. It's a murky, forbidding, and lonely vision. This world isn't just empty, it's hostile: the personified breakers are "angry," and the "Storm-clouds brood" as if preparing to make trouble.
This, the speaker tells readers, is the "great Gromboolian plain," near the "Hills of the Chankly Bore." Readers familiar with Edward Lear's work will know from these words alone that they're entering Lear's nonsense world: over and over again, his poems visited these peculiar invented places, whose names are as savory as their landscapes are inhospitable.
Just listen to way the alliterative /gr/ of "great Gromboolian" knocks against its round /oo/, or consider how the mere sound of the words "Chankly Bore' conjures up sharp, chalky, desolate rock. This delight in evocative sound—using the music of language to conjure meaning and atmosphere out of nonsense—is a hallmark of Lear's poetry.
So is a responsive, flexible form. Notice that there’s no steady pattern of meter or rhyme here:
- Lear uses accentual meter—that is, lines that use a certain number of beats, but don't stick to a regular metrical foot like the iamb or the trochee.
- In this stanza, he dances between lines with three beats (as in "When the angry breakers roar") and lines with four beats (as in "When awful darkness and silence reign"), creating a surging, unpredictable rhythm that swells and falls like the wind.
- Always rhythmic and musical, the poem's meter will change shape to suit the unfolding drama.
And drama does seem to be on the way. This whole first moody stanza, readers gather, is a kind of drumroll or overture, preparing the audience for the story to come. Listen to the ominous anaphora in these first lines:
When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights;—
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;—
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:—All those "when"s make it clear that something is about to happen against this grim backdrop.
-
Lines 8-14
Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black night,—
A Meteor strange and bright:—
Hither and thither the vision strays,
A single lurid light. -
Lines 15-25
Slowly it wanders,—pauses,—creeps,—
Anon it sparkles,—flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
And those who watch at that midnight hour
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as the wild light passes along,—
"The Dong!—the Dong!
"The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
"The Dong! the Dong!
"The Dong with a luminous Nose!" -
Lines 26-39
Long years ago
The Dong was happy and gay,
Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
Who came to those shores one day.
For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,—
Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
And the rocks are smooth and gray.
And all the woods and the valleys rang
With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,—
"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve. -
Lines 40-47
Happily, happily passed those days!
While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
They danced in circlets all night long,
To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
In moonlight, shine, or shade.
For day and night he was always there
By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair. -
Lines 48-59
Till the morning came of that hateful day
When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
Gazing—gazing for evermore,—
Ever keeping his weary eyes on
That pea-green sail on the far horizon,—
Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
As he sate all day on the grassy hill,—
"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve. -
Lines 60-69
But when the sun was low in the West,
The Dong arose and said;
—"What little sense I once possessed
Has quite gone out of my head!"—
And since that day he wanders still
By lake and forest, marsh and hills,
Singing—"O somewhere, in valley or plain
"Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
"For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
"Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!" -
Lines 70-76
Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
And because by night he could not see,
He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
On the flowery plain that grows.
And he wove him a wondrous Nose,—
A Nose as strange as a Nose could be! -
Lines 77-85
Of vast proportions and painted red,
And tied with cords to the back of his head.
—In a hollow rounded space it ended
With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
All fenced about
With a bandage stout
To prevent the wind from blowing it out;—
And with holes all round to send the light,
In gleaming rays on the dismal night. -
Lines 86-93
And now each night, and all night long,
Over those plains still roams the Dong;
And above the wail of the Chimp and Snipe
You may hear the squeak of his plaintive pipe
While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
Lonely and wild—all night he goes,—
The Dong with a luminous Nose! -
Lines 94-103
And all who watch at the midnight hour,
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
Moving along through the dreary night,—
"This is the hour when forth he goes,
"The Dong with a luminous Nose!
"Yonder—over the plain he goes;
"He goes!
"He goes;
"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"
-
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Symbols
-
The Luminous Nose
The Dong’s luminous nose carries all sorts of mysterious symbolic weight:
- In its unignorable bright-red, "lurid" bulbousness, it represents the Dong's heartbreak, which alters him so profoundly that his very appearance must change. (Some critics have also seen the Dong's nose as a phallic symbol, an image of frustrated and humiliating sexuality.)
- In its elegant artistry—the Dong carefully designs and weaves it—it's an image of art itself, creativity springing up in response to suffering.
- In its brightness, the nose's lamp suggests the Dong's persistent hope that he might find his Jumbly Girl again, as well as an image of his persistent love: he's literally carrying a torch for her!
- And in its noseness, it might symbolize instinct and the power to seek and find, as a dog's sniffer does. Note, though, that the Dong uses his nose as a lantern, not a—well—nose; perhaps he's even muting his own capacity to smell with his prosthesis. That could be part of the nose's meaning, too: the Dong chooses to go on seeking his Jumbly Girl rather than sniffing out the tragic unlikeliness of their reunion.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Imagery
Lear creates his atmospheric nonsense land both through sound and imagery. The rattly, grumbly sounds of place names like the "Chankly Bore" and the "great Gromboolian plain" suggest a stark, rocky landscape—an impression that Lear underscores when he describes the scene. "Angry breakers roar / As they beat on the rocky shore," "Storm-clouds brood" over the hills, and an "awful darkness and silence" hangs over it all; this is an unhappy, forbidding landscape.
In the "vast and gloomy dark" of this place, the Dong's luminous nose thus stands out, its light a "lonely spark with silvery rays" that shoot through the "coal-black night." As his nose-lamp "sparkles,—flashes and leaps," it strikes a hopeful contrast with all that darkness—though it's also "lurid" and harsh, reflecting the tragic madness in the Dong's futile quest.
Against this backdrop of brooding shadows and sharp silvery light, the Jumblies offer a brief, poignant flash of color. As they often sing of themselves, "Their heads are green and their hands are blue"—or, as the Dong observes of his beloved Jumbly Girl, "sea-green" and "sky-blue," colors that evoke a happier, livelier natural world than the stormy, rocky one the Dong inhabits. Alas, a flash of a "pea-green sail" is the last colorful thing the Dong sees as the Jumblies leave his land.
Perhaps a longing for this lost color and light shapes the design of the Dong's nose. "Of vast proportions and painted red," the nose is the antithesis of all the shapeless, lumpen darkness the Dong wanders through; its brightness is both sad and defiant.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Repetition
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Caesura
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Allusion
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Alliteration
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
-
"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Awful
- The great Gromboolian plain
- Breakers
- The Hills of the Chankly Bore
- Hither and thither
- Lurid
- Anon
- Bong-tree
- Gay
- Jumblies
- At eve
- Zemmery Fidd
- Staid
- Plaintive
- Sate
- Twangum Tree
- Stout
- Dismal
- Snipe
- Yonder
-
"Awful" here can mean both "awe-inspiring" and "dreadful."
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”
-
Form
"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" is one of Edward Lear's classic nonsense poems. That is, it's a fantastical poem set in an invented world, notable for its chewy, exuberant made-up words. While such poetry has a reputation for whimsy, Lear—the granddaddy of the form—often wrote the most melancholy of nonsense, as he does in this tale of the lonely Dong. (Please note that, when Lear wrote this poem, the word "Dong" didn't have any of its ruder modern connotations; the name might have made the poem's first readers think of the solemn sound of a tolling bell more than anything.)
Like a lot of Lear's longer nonsense verse, this poem uses a meandering shape of Lear's own invention. The poem's eight irregular stanzas range from 7 to 20 lines long, changing shape to suit the story's dramatic needs:
- The first two short stanzas, for instance, paint a sharp, suspenseful picture of a mysterious "lurid light" weaving through the darkness.
- Meanwhile, the more leisurely stanza at lines 40-59 takes its time to unfold the Dong's tragic history.
-
Meter
This poem doesn’t stick to any one metrical pattern. Instead, its lines dance around, changing shape to fit the story the speaker tells.
For instance, listen to how the stresses fall in the first stanza:
When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights;—
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;—
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:—These lines are all written in accentual meter: that is, they keep to a certain number of beats per line, but use all kinds of different feet rather than sticking to just one (like the iamb or the trochee). Here, an unpredictable mixture of four-beat lines and three-beat lines creates an emphatic but uneasy rhythm, rather like the “angry breakers” rolling in against the “rocky shore.”
Lear will use this flexible meter for dramatic effect at the end of the third stanza, when the onlookers who watch the Dong from their towers cry:
"The Dong!—the Dong!
"The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
"The Dong! the Dong!
"The Dong with a luminous Nose!"The two-beat lines that introduce the Dong feel grand and solemn: it's as if his bell-like name is tolling out in the silence of the "great Gromboolian plain."
-
Rhyme Scheme
Because this poem uses an irregular stanza form, it doesn’t have a predictable, mappable rhyme scheme—though it does use plenty of rhyme. A couple of repeated rhyme words—“Dong” and “nose”—reappear as a touchstone. But for the most part, Lear’s lively rhymes shift shape to suit the part of the story he’s telling.
For instance, listen to the rhymes in the first stanza:
AABCCBC
The rhymes here don’t fall into a clear pattern. Instead, they unpredictably interweave, creating an uneasy, echoey effect that suits this eerie introduction to the Dong's world.
In the last stanza, meanwhile, Lear uses a long run of couplets that ends in a dramatic string of identical rhymes:
AABBCCDDEEFFDDDDDD
Those tense couplets work like a drumroll, leading up to that long, long stretch of D rhymes on “nose” and “goes”—a repetitive passage that mirrors the Dong's ceaseless, futile search for his Jumbly Girl.
-
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Speaker
-
The poem's speaker isn't part of the action. Rather, they're an omniscient narrator describing how the "Dong with a luminous Nose" came to wander the "great Gromboolian plain." Hovering over the scene, the speaker can move in close to hear the whispers of "those who watch" as the Dong makes his way past, observe from afar as the Dong's nose pulls a comet-like trail through the dark, and delve into the Dong's tragic past. This dramatic storyteller's voice makes the tale of the Dong feel hushed and somber: it's as if readers are listening to the speaker whispering on a cold winter night.
Readers might be tempted to interpret the Dong as Lear's self-portrait. Exuberant of schnoz himself, Lear suffered terribly from unrequited love and always felt like an outsider and an odd duck—not unlike his poem's hero.
-
-
“The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Setting
-
"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" is set in a nonsense world of Lear's own invention. Readers might find this strange world oddly familiar if they’ve read some of Lear’s other poetry—most especially "The Jumblies," the tale to which this poem is a melancholy sequel. The "Hills of the Chankly Bore" put in their first appearance in that jauntier, more optimistic poem.
Lear writes of his imagined places with calm authority, trusting that the mere sounds of the words "Gromboolian," "Chankly Bore," and "Zemmery Fidd" will paint a picture of a strange and forbidding landscape. He describes a land of "long, long wintry nights" in which "Storm-clouds brood" over the barren countryside; if it weren't for the watchers who look on from an occasional "Hall" or "lofty Tower," the Dong's land would feel almost empty.
The landscape isn’t totally bare, though. It grows abundant flora and fauna, from "Bong-tree[s]" to "Oblong Oysters" to the "Twangum Tree" from whose bark the Dong weaves his marvelous Nose. Those specific names might remind readers that Lear began his career as a zoological illustrator, paying careful Victorian attention to different species of parrot. His invented land has a certain biological precision.
The poem might be set in a nonsense-world, but that world is also atmospheric, rich, and physical. The image of the Dong's nose-lantern throwing "a light on the Bong-tree stems" as the Dong wanders past feels as vivid as if it were being played on a stage.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”
-
Literary Context
The English poet Edward Lear (1812-1888) was one of the great masters of 19th-century nonsense literature, a genre marked by witty wordplay, absurd humor, tales of the fantastical, and quietly anarchic rebellion against Victorian stuffiness. Though Lear initially made his living as a zoological painter (specializing in parrots) and a travel writer, his lasting reputation rests on his musical, melancholy light verse, especially his giddy and surreal limericks. Though Lear didn't invent the limerick, he popularized and perfected the form, most famously in A Book of Nonsense (1846).
Lear first published "The Dong with a Luminous Nose" in his 1877 collection Laughable Lyrics—one of his latest and richest collections of nonsense verse. Alongside such bittersweet poems as "The Pelican Chorus" and "The Pobble Who Has No Toes," the "Dong" expresses Lear's sorrow as well as his wit, telling a tale of loneliness and estrangement that draws on the eccentric poet's own lifelong sense of exile.
Lear's closest peer as a Victorian nonsense poet was Lewis Carroll, who wove "Jabberwocky," "The Walrus and the Carpenter," and other famous poems into his novel Through the Looking-Glass (published in 1871, the same year as Lear's Nonsense Songs). But the two kings of nonsense never met. Instead, Lear rubbed elbows with major Victorian figures connected with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, like the painter William Holman Hunt and the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (for some of whose poems Lear composed elegant musical arrangements). In the 20th century, Lear's work would influence everyone from W.H. Auden to Dr. Seuss.
Historical Context
Edward Lear led a life full of longing, habitually feeling that the happiness and comradery he craved lay just out of his reach (perhaps one of the reasons he responded to his friend Tennyson's wistful poetry so intensely). The youngest surviving child of 21 (!), Lear was raised by his doting sister Ann after their father lost most of his money and the family had to split up. While Lear loved Ann very much, he also felt abandoned by his parents, especially his mother. Like the Dong, he would spend much of his life wandering from place to place trying to find the loving closeness he hungered for.
For most of his life, Lear made a living as a landscape painter. (In fact, he once overheard a rude young man dismissing him as nothing but a "dirty landscape painter," a turn of phrase he gleefully appropriated and used to describe himself for the rest of his life.) He traveled widely across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, painting the scenery in Rome, Corfu, Luxor, and Jerusalem, among many other beautiful places.
During his adventures, he fell in (mostly) unrequited love with Franklin Lushington, a fellow Englishman abroad. The two men made a dreamy journey through Greece together, relishing the landscape: describing the spring flowers they delighted in that year, Lear wrote that "the whole earth is like a rich Turkey carpet."
But before long, Lushington withdrew, unable to match the sheer intensity of Lear's feelings. Lear spent long and fruitless years trying to recapture the closeness they'd briefly shared. The pair would remain friends all their lives, but that tantalizing friendship itself could be a kind of torment for Lear.
By the time Lear published "The Dong with a Luminous Nose," he'd undergone another serious romantic disappointment: a twice-declined proposal to Augusta Bethell, a younger woman he called "Gussie." As in the case of Lushington, the two remained friends even after Gussie turned Lear down; many of the people he cared for loved him, too, just not in quite the way he'd hoped.
In "The Jumblies," then, Lear made glorious nonsense from his joy in finding unconventional fellow-travelers in a staid and judgmental world. In "The Dong with a Luminous Nose," he lamented the fact that such joy always seemed to withdraw, one time or another.
-
-
More “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” Resources
-
External Resources
-
A Brief Biography — Learn more about Lear's life and work via the Edward Lear Society.
-
Lear's Art — Admire some of Lear's artwork. Alongside his famous and excellent cartoons, he was a notable wildlife and landscape painter.
-
Lear's Legacy — Read about a recent biography of Lear that describes his lasting influence.
-
The Poem Aloud — Listen to an atmospheric (and musical) performance of the poem by the great Ivor Cutler.
-
Lear's Drawings — See Lear's own rendition of the Dong and his luminous nose (and read a short appreciation of the poem by writer Sam Munson).
-
Laughable Lyrics — See images from the 1877 collection in which this poem was first published.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Edward Lear
-
