From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 196-197.
MORPHEUS AND ME
When we our nightly sleeping run
On schedules made by Edison,
We’ll linger little in the hay,
For he has oft been heard to say
He sleeps four hours or less each day.
It would be neither kind nor nice
To say he gives this bum advice
That folks may sit up half the night
And so burn more electric light;
But as for me I’ll tell the throng
That Thomas has my number wrong.
Four hours may do for supermen,
But Rural Rhymers should have ten.
This bard’s a most efficient snoozer;
He is not midnight Mazda* user.
I like soft pillows for my head,
I like my rest, I like my bed.
I love to stretch and linger there;
It’s warmer than the outside air.
Within I bask in regions torrid,
When I’m dragged out my words are horrid.
The time for nature’s sweet restorer
Shall find me still a heavy snorer.
[197]
There lived in Rome one Julius Cæsar —
’Most everybody knows the geezer —
Who said that jobs should go by rights
To healthy folks who slept well nights.
If ancient Rome had been my mother,
He would have loved me like a brother.
If I had nothing else to do,
I’d sleep all night and all day too.
Elf.Ed Notes
* Mazda light. — Thomas Edison co-founded a company called The Mazda Light Company. I presume that the name came from Ahura-Mazda, the ancient Zoroastrian supreme God in Persia (Iran).
Mazda means “omniscient, all-knowing,” see Media, Babylona and Persia Zénaïde A. Ragozin; London: T. Fisher Unwin; 4th Edition, [undated], p. 61.
In Survey of Instrumentation and Measurement, edited by Stephen A. Dyer [of Kansas State University]; New York: Wiley-Interscience, John Wiley & Sons; 2001 on p. 875, it states:
“With the invention of the electric light in 1879, Thomas Edison made the first electric equipment, the incandescent lamp. . . . The Mazda Light Company was first formed with Edison to solve the problem of accurate measurements in 1881 with the development of the chemical meter.”
Edison’s light bulb was the first design feasible for wide-spread use. See the Wikipedia entry for Incandescent Light Bulb.