Which Alice poem is a parody of Isaac Watts's The Sluggard?

'Tis the Voice of the Lobster is the Alice poem that parodies Isaac Watts's The Sluggard.

The poem appears in Chapter 10 of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel, during the Mock Turtle's and Gryphon's seaside episode. Alice is asked to recite “'Tis the voice of the sluggard,” but her mind is still occupied by the Lobster Quadrille, so she produces a bizarre lobster version instead.

Watts's original is a moral warning about laziness and wasted opportunity. Carroll transfers that structure into comic nonsense: the lobster boasts, worries about being baked, and becomes vulnerable despite its grand manner. The parody is therefore not merely a poem with altered words; it keeps the rhythm and framework while replacing the moral lesson with absurd predatory imagery.

A common mix-up is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat, which is the Hatter's parody of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Beautiful Soup is another song in the same chapter, while The Mouse's Tale is a shaped poem earlier in the book.