622 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. 



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 chcenix 

 I'll freely soar to realms of day 



An emerald cabbage-Phoenix. 



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." 



LINES written under the conviction that it is not wise to read 

 Mathematics in November after one's fire is out. 



10th Nov. 1853. 

 IN the sad November time, 

 When the leaf has left the lime, 

 And the Cam, with sludge and slime, 

 Plasters his ugly channel, 



