Reply to the Above, by F.W.F.

"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"