The Modern Major-General.

I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral.     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-Gineral.     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 conies 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 confounded nonsense "Pinafore."     Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,     And tell you every detail of Caractacus's 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 Chassepot 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 learn 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.