“A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky” Lewis Carroll’s Love Poem for the Real-Life Alice

An analysis of one of Carroll’s best poems and the questionable inspiration behind it.

Carroll with four children and their mother, by Lewis Carroll/Getty Images, Source

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“A Boat, Beneath A Sunny Sky” is a poem by Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. The poem appears at the end of Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. The themes of winter and death that are prevalent throughout Through the Looking Glass are just as prevalent throughout this poem.

Alice going through the looking glass. Illustrated by John Tenniel, Photo by Wikimedia Commons. Source

Here is the poem in its entirety.

Edith, Lorina and Alice Liddell, Photo by Lewis Carroll, 1858. Wikimedia.

A boat beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

The first stanza refers to July 4th, 1862, when Lewis Carroll went on a boating expedition up the Thames with Alice Liddell and her two sisters. It is there that Carroll first…