The Ballad of Schatz and Waksman

[brynmawr1]

Among the great exponents of science

are those who grapple hard for glory

and those who find it snatched away,   these two lines are confusing mostly, I think cause 'grapple' might be considered a positive, maybe 'hunger' or similar

with names confined to dusty books,  their

brief mentions, at best;   could cut this line

and few, if any, hear their story:

 

Albert Schatz, for example,

was entranced by soil;

he mulched his way through masses of muck

and found a microbe he supposed

could halt the charge of tuberculosis.

Within a matter of months,

a saviour appeared: streptomycin.

 

His supervisor, one Selman Waksman,

assumed control of the clinical trials.

Waksman received a Nobel Prize,

and as for Schatz,

long after Waksman’s death,

he earned a kind of mangled amends:

the American Society for Microbiology

bestowed on him its highest award:

the Selman Waksman medal.

Hi Trevor,
Nice story and the ending lands IMO.  My only gripe is that I find the style to be overly prosaic.  It might work better as a prose poem.  Right now the line breaks are mainly for meter, as far as I can tell, as there is little enjambment or other significance to the breaks.  I have only vague inklings of how to make it more lyrical so no suggestions on that front for the moment.
Thanks for the read,
Bryn