Page:Songs of a Savoyard.djvu/30

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I know our mythic history— and , I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox, I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of , In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous. I can tell undoubted from  and , I know the croaking chorus from the "Frogs" of , Then I can hum a fugue, of which I've heard the music's din afore, And whistle all the airs from that confounded nonsense "Pinafore." Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform, And tell you every detail of uniform. In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.

In fact when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin," When I can tell at sight a Chassepôt 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 elementary 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 learning vegetable, animal and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral!