The Professor at the Breakfast-TableHolmes, Oliver Wendell
General
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
American fiction -- 19th century; Conversation -- Fiction; Poetry
--The following poem is my (The Professor's) only contribution to the
great department of Ocean-Cable literature. As all the poets of this
country will be engaged for the next six weeks in writing for the
premium offered by the Crystal-Palace Company for the Burns Centenary,
(so called, according to our Benjamin Franklin, because there will
be nary a cent for any of us,) poetry will be very scarce and dear.
Consumers may, consequently, be glad to take the present article, which,
by the aid of a Latin tutor--and a Professor of Chemistry, will be found
intelligible to the educated classes.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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