94 My Aunt

MY aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!

Long years have o’er her flown;

Yet still she strains the aching clasp

That binds her virgin zone;

I know it hurts her,—though she looks

As cheerful as she can;

Her waist is ampler than her life,

For life is but a span.

My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!

Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl

In such a springlike way?

How can she lay her glasses down,

And say she reads as well,

When, through a double convex lens,

She just makes out to spell?

Her father—grandpapa! forgive

This erring lip its smiles—

Vowed she should make the finest girl

Within a hundred miles;

He sent her to a stylish school;

’T was in her thirteenth June;

And with her, as the rules required,

“Two towels and a spoon.”

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,

To make her light and small;

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,

They screwed it up with pins;—

O never mortal suffered more

In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,

My grandsire brought her back;

(By daylight, lest some rabid youth

Might follow on the track;)

“Ah!” said my grandsire, as he shook

Some powder in his pan,

“What could this lovely creature do

Against a desperate man!”

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,

Nor bandit cavalcade,

Tore from the trembling father’s arms

His all-accomplished maid.

For her how happy had it been!

And Heaven had spared to me

To see one sad, ungathered rose

On my ancestral tree.

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