Mother Goose for Grownups/The Linguistic Languor of Charles Augustus Sprague
A child of nature curious
Was Charles Augustus Sprague;
He made his parents furious
Because he was so vague:
Although his age was nearly two
Eleven words were all he knew,
These sounded much as sounds the Dutch
That’s spoken at the Hague.
A few of his errata
’Tis just I should avow,
He called his mother “Tata,”
And “moo” he dubbed a cow,
Nor was it altogether plain
Why “choo-choo” meant a railway train.
He called a cat “miouw,” and that
No purist would allow.
Within his father’s orchard
There stood, for all to see,
With branches bent and tortured,
An ancient apple tree:
That Charles Augustus Sprague might drowse
His mother on its swaying boughs
His cradle hung, and while it swung,
She sang with energy.
A sudden blow arising
One day, the branches broke,
With suddenness surprising
The sleeping babe awoke,
And crashing down to earth he fell.
Ah me, that I should have to tell
The words that mild and genial child
On this occasion spoke!
His face convulsed and checquered
With passion and with tears,
He blotted out the record
Of both his speechless years:
His mother stupefied, aghast,
Heard Charles Augustus speak at last;
He opened wide his mouth and cried
These ill conditioned sneers.
“Sapristi! Accidente!
Perchance my speech is late,
But, be she two or twenty,
A nincompoop I hate!
What idiot said that woman’s ‘planned
To warn, to comfort, and command?’”
His words I quench. Excuse my French—
Je dis que tu m’embêtes!
The moral: Common clocks, we find,
In silence take a sudden wind,
But only heroes, as we know,
In silence take a sudden blow.