Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, REMARKS MITCHELL AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF WILLIAM H. WELCH, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

REMARKS MITCHELL AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF WILLIAM H. WELCH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: T is said that hovering near your infant couch
Last Line: "tuus ex anima."
Subject(s): Nature; Physicians; Welch, William Henry (1850-1934); Doctors


DR. MITCHELL: Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen, and You, my Friend, the
Sacrificial Victim of the After-Dinner Hour: Travel in strange lands is the
more pleasant for knowledge of the language spoken, and it was the fact of my
lack of tongues which made me doubt how fit I was to appear on this occasion,
where, as I learned somewhat appalled, everybody was expected to talk Welch.
To stumble bewildered, an intellectual tenderfoot, in the learned land of Johns
Hopkins, might certainly give any man pause, but in the court of wisdom there
must be of necessity a fool, and so I accept the position of the provider of
sentimental folly and make my little venture.

'T IS said that hovering near your infant couch
The fairy forms of Art and Science flew
In generous counsel o'er the golden gifts
They bade a joyous future pledge to you.

And if, they said, your life shall fail to give
What Bacon called the "hostages to fate,"
Unnumbered friends shall challenge love with love,
And ever through your happy hours elate.

Fair Nature, coyest of all maids that hold
Reluctant mysteries from their lovers dear,
Shall on victorious quests divinely smile
And tell her secrets to your listening ear.

Not yours shall be, companioned by the stars,
To soar through space on thought's ambitious wings
To worlds unseen; nay, yours shall be to roam
That wondrous other realm of little things.

There, half unread, the ever less and less
Lost in the lessening less, eludes our sight
In space as sunless and more dark with fate
Than are the baleful planets of the night.

There shall you stand upon the twilight verge,
Where fades the sight of each material thing,
And baffled, wonder, what an hundred years
To other eyes than ours may haply bring.

A lilliputian world to you we give,
Where deadly swarm the grim bacterial blights,
With amboceptors, strange malignant priests,
For demon marriage with satanic rites.

Here stegomyia and anopheles
Are huge behemoths of this lesser sphere
Where gay spirilla wriggle lively tails,
And vexed erythrocytes grow pale with fear.

"Be these your friends," the flitting fairies cried,
"But who is this that leads a pirate crew?
"Bacterium chronos! Get you gone from hence,
"Or hungry leucocytes we'll set on you!"

A truce to folly. Long ago for you
Has rung the fatal hour of Osler's jest:
Still young, the merry smile, the glowing mind,
No least sad failure ever yet confessed.

Life's summer overflow reserves for you
The golden days of lingering life's September,
October loitering waits for you, my friend,
And summer haunted glories of November.

Perhaps Johns Hopkins has some secret charm
That lets professors very neatly swindle
The robber time and feel enfeebling days
Toward youthful vigor quite reversely dwindle!

Alas, a most appalling doom awaits!—
A pedriatic clinic at the end—
Pertussis, measles, teeth to cut, and then
The bottle,—but which bottle? Ah! my friend,

We'll ask of Kelly, he will surely know
When comes at last your latest, earliest year,
With all of physiology at fault
How shall you ever gently disappear?

Far be the day for you. One grief I own;
What science won my art has something cost
Since the clear mind and ever-ready smile
Were to the bedside visit sadly lost.

Ave et vale! O magister, take
Greeting and blessing from our greatest soul!
The rippling sweetness of his echoing verse
I seem to hear from that far century roll.

Too poor my rhyme to fitly entertain
The stately splendor of the Latin line;
Ah! happy he to whom this greeting went—
They spirit-kinsman, Harvey—makes it thine!

"Vir doctissime!
Humanissime!
Vale mi' Amantissime!
Tuus ex anima."





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