Oh dear, oh, dear, I shall be too late
How am I supposed to finish at this rate?
I haven't even started; why, there's only twenty-four hours in a day,
How am I supposed to get along, traveling along in this way?

The seconds drag by at just the wrong time
and fly by and by, as easily as if my very being were just another nursery rhyme!
Oh dear, oh, dear, I shall be too late!
What is one supposed to do, what, living in such a silly nilly world
where, in a single minute, anything could be created - a million things times eight?

For the rule is jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday -
but never jam today, and though this is doubtful, and the notion does our thoughts betray,
it's quite, quite true; time will leave you behind
whether you're a mouse or a house, fates intertwined,
or a bonny lass of a maid.

"But here, in our country, you generally get somewhere or another,
if you've been running very quickly for a while, as we have, you foolish other!"
Only in a slow sort of country or a slow sort of mind,
for it takes all the running you can to stay in the same place, you'll find
and twice as fast as that to move forward!

How can one race through time?
"Curiouser and curiouser", it seems it can be in all of its prime
though I don't really know,
still overly aware of how late it's getting, watching the sun fade to meet the darkness below.

I'm like a hamster on a spinning wheel,
attempting the impossible, too arrogant to risk a wound to my pride that'd never heal -
"I can't go back to yesterday,
for I was a different person then, and, this, I'll try to convey."

Yes, once upon a time, a clock began ticking
and, to this day, the sound can be heard, this I bet on my mother's pinky ring -
yet, if you so choose to let the sound rule the day
then, I guess, you're more defeated then that girl who ran for the hills,
leaving behind her precious curds and whey.