Читать книгу The Professor at the Breakfast-Table - Oliver Wendell Holmes - Страница 8

DE SAUTY

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE.

Professor. Blue-Nose.

PROFESSOR.

Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal!

Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you,

Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder,

Holding talk with nations?

Is there a De Sauty, ambulant on Tellus,

Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in night-cap,

Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature

Three times daily patent?

Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal?

Or is he a mythus—ancient word for “humbug,”

—Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed

Romulus and Remus?

Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty?

Or a living product of galvanic action,

Like the status bred in Crosses flint-solution?

Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

BLUE-NOSE.

Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger,

Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster!

Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me,

Thou shalt hear them answered.

When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable,

At the polar focus of the wire electric

Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us

Called himself “DE SAUTY.”

As the small opossum held in pouch maternal

Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia,

So the unknown stranger held the wire electric,

Sucking in the current.

When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,

Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,

And from time to time, in sharp articulation,

Said, “All right! DE SAUTY.”

From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading

Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples

Till the land was filled with loud reverberations

Of “All right! DE SAUTY.”

When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,

Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,

Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor

Of disintegration.

Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead,

Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence,

Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended,

There was no De Sauty.

Nothing but a cloud of elements organic,

C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chor. Flu. Sil. Potassa,

Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang.(?) Alumin.(?) Cuprum,(?)

Such as man is made of.

Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished!

There is no De Sauty now there is no current!

Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him

Cry, “All right! DE SAUTY.”