Oh! multifarious man! 
Thou Wondrous, Admirable Kitchen Crichton! 
      Born to enlighten
The laws of Optics, Peptics, Music, Cooking—­ Master of the Piano—­and the Pan—­ As busy with the kitchen as the skies! 
      Now looking
At some rich stew thro’ Galileo’s eyes,—­
Or boiling eggs—­timed to a metronome—­
      As much at home
In spectacles as in mere isinglass—­
In the art of frying brown—­as a digression
On music and poetical expression,
Whereas, how few of all our cooks, alas! 
Could tell Calliope from “Callipee!”
       How few there be
Could leave the lowest for the highest stories, (Observatories,)
And turn, like thee, Diana’s calculator,
However cook’s synonymous with Kater! 
      Alas! still let me say,
        How few could lay
The carving knife beside the tuning fork,
Like the proverbial Jack ready for any work!

II.

Oh, to behold thy features in thy book! 
Thy proper head and shoulders in a plate,
      How it would look! 
With one rais’d eye watching the dial’s date,
And one upon the roast, gently cast down—­
    Thy chops—­done nicely brown—­
The garnish’d brow—­with “a few leaves of bay”—­
    The hair—­“done Wiggy’s way!”
And still one studious finger near thy brains,
    As if thou wert just come
    From editing some
New soup—­or hashing Dibdin’s cold remains;
Or, Orpheus-like,—­fresh from thy dying strains
Of music,—­Epping luxuries of sound,
    As Milton says, “in many a bout
    Of linked sweetness long drawn out,”
Whilst all thy tame stuff’d leopards listen’d round!

III.

Oh, rather thy whole proper length reveal,
Standing like Fortune,—­on the jack—­thy wheel. 
(Thou art, like Fortune, full of chops and changes,
Thou hast a fillet too before thine eye!)
Scanning our kitchen, and our vocal ranges,
As tho’ it were the same to sing or fry—­
Nay, so it is—­hear how Miss Paton’s throat
    Makes “fritters” of a note! 
And how Tom Cook (Fryer and Singer born
  By name and nature) oh! how night and morn
    He for the nicest public taste doth dish up
The good things from that Pan of music, Bishop! 
And is not reading near akin to feeding,
  Or why should Oxford Sausages be fit
    Receptacles for wit? 
  Or why should Cambridge put its little, smart,
    Minc’d brains into a Tart? 
Nay, then, thou wert but wise to frame receipts,
        Book-treats,
Equally to instruct the Cook and cram her—­
  Receipts to be devour’d, as well as read,
      The Culinary Art in gingerbread—­
    The Kitchen’s Eaten Grammar!

IV.