Reply to the Above, by F.W.F.
James Clerk Maxwell 1831 (Edinburgh, Scotland) – 1879 (Cambridge, England)
"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 chœnix
I’ll freely soar to realms of day
An emerald cabbage-Phœnix.
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"
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 72 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | X AXABCXCX DEDEEFEF GHGHIEIE JKJKLKLK MNMNCBCB |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,229 |
Words | 237 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
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"Reply to the Above, by F.W.F." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/20068/reply-to-the-above,-by-f.w.f.>.
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