Modern Major General

a modern major general.
a modern major general:

i am the very model of a modern major-general,
i’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
i know the kings of england, and i quote the fights historical
from marathon to waterloo, in order categorical;
i’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
i understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
about binomial theorem i’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
with many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

i’m very good at integral and differential calculus;
i know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
in short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
i am the very model of a modern major-general.

i know our mythic history, king arthur’s and sir caradoc’s;
i answer hard acrostics, i’ve a pretty taste for paradox,
i quote in elegiacs all the crimes of heliogabalus,
in conics i can floor peculiarities parabolous;
i can tell undoubted raphaels from gerard dows and zoffanies,
i know the croaking chorus from the frogs of aristophanes!
then i can hum a fugue of which i’ve heard the music’s din afore,
and whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense pinafore.

then i can write a washing bill in babylonic cuneiform,
and tell you ev’ry detail of caractacus’s uniform:
in short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
i am the very model of a modern major-general.

in fact, when i know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”,
when i can tell at sight a mauser rifle from a javelin,
when such affairs as sorties and surprises i’m more wary at,
and when i know precisely what is meant by “commissariat”,
when i have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
when i know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery–
in short, when i’ve a smattering of elemental strategy,
you’ll say a better major-general has never sat a gee.

for my military knowledge, though i’m plucky and adventury,
has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
but still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
i am the very model of a modern major-general.