Sit down, dear Balustrade, and join me in a toast
To the departed. Nothing gloomy.
His life was long and his accomplishments
Were brilliant. If you consider this singular,
This wonderful great man
You might make him the subject
Of your next book. You could not do better
Than this native genius of our Western states.
Pauling. I am speaking of Linus Pauling
Who spanned our century and graced our science
And the conscience of our people.
You know him, of course, from his second Nobel,
The one for peace, his crusade to stop
Atomic testing in the atmosphere;
Perhaps for his work on vitamin C.
Surely this is a subject for a book;
Better I'm certain than another self-analysis
In 500 pages with anecdotes about
Ex-wives and tough guys from Chicago.
Just think of it. Born when McKinley
Was President, died last week
In the era of the global superhighway
The time of hyperspace and the triumph of the West.
Surely our literature would benefit
If we wrote of giants instead of self-absorbed
Literary midgets. Not you, of course.
Your books reflect a deep sense of our time,
The great American adventure.
This is why I offer you the thought.
A book on him would be an inspiration
For our youth, our future.
His treatise on the bonds of chemistry
Could bind us all to clarity of mind,
Could teach us once again that reason
Reaches out beyond experiment to life.
Think of the impact you could have
With such a model on the future.
A beacon across the dark places, the unknowable
That will face us in the next millenium
Where history awaits.
A toast then, to Pauling, the man of the West,
The spirit of the frontier.