Poetry with Numbers -- from Lewis Carroll

     One of the timeless treasures on my bookshelves is a complete collection of work by Lewis Carroll (pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898) -- writer, puzzler, math guy . . . Here's a poem I found in "Answers to Knot 1" in A Tangled Tale.  (The problem, Knot 1, is stated below the poem.)

from   A Tangled Tale     a response (by authors named below) to a puzzle posed by Lewis Carroll

        The elder and the younger knight
           They sallied forth at three;
        How far they went on level ground
           It matters not to me;
        What time they reached the foot of hill,
           When they began to mount,
        Are problems which I hold to be
           Of very small account.

Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Literary works by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898, aka Lewis Carroll) are crammed with mentions of mathematics.   One of my favorites (found here with numerous others, including "Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, Derision") is this exchange from Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

          "Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
          "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.  "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.  Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
                                                                                       Alice in Wonderland 

To love, in perfect syllables

     While looking for Valentine verse with a math connection, I opened my copy of The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll (Chancellor Press, 1982).  And found this one in which Carroll (a pen name for English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodson (1832-1898)) uses the word one twice and the word half twice and has counted sounds so that in each line the number of syllables is either a cube of an integer or is perfect.

        Lesson in Latin     by Lewis Carroll    (May 1888)