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 spring-like 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 I 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;— Oh 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.