Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

by Edgar Allan Poe

by T.S.Eliot

  S'io credesse chc mia risposta fosse
  A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
  Questa Gamma staria senza piu scosse.
  Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
  Non torno viva alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
  Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

by 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.