"Te quoque vatem dicunt pastores."-VIRGIL.
O Maxwell, if by reason-s strength
And studying of Babbage,
You have transformed yourself at length
Into a mental cabbage;
And if I've proved myself a lark
At morn and blushing even,
By soaring like a music-spark
Thro- sapphire fields of Heaven,
Our diverse fates are now reversed
By strange metempsychosis,
Into a cabbage I have burst
And scorn poetic posies;
But you a lark with twinkling wings
O-er violet-banks are soaring;
Your voice the dewy rose-cloud rings
While Statics me are boring.
Yet cabbage as I will-on earth
My roots I cannot anchor,
For at my mathematic birth
Was also born a canker!
It soon will gnaw my roots away--
But when I weigh a chÅ?nix
I-ll freely soar to realms of day
An emerald cabbage-PhÅ?nix.
Then talk not of the Poll to me,
I hate, detest, and scorn it;
I am as earnest as a bee,
But savage as a hornet.
And if they pluck me I will drown
Each pedant in a sonnet,
And of their pluckings make a crown
With golden plumes upon it.
So if my cabbage growth be slow
I'll try to be a carrot,
Or still remain a lark-but know
I'll not be Poll, or Parrot.
Then if I fall beneath the mark,
I-ll shout with accent savage,
"It is a lark to be a lark,
-Tis green to be a cabbage"
Reply To The Above, By F.w.f.
James Clerk Maxwell
(1)
Poem topics: away, birth, cloud, green, hate, heaven, music, rose, sonnet, strength, voice, earth, crown, remain, mental, violet, talk, reason, golden, slow, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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