My Aunt

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!

Long years have o’er her flown;

Yet still she strains the aching

That binds her virgin zone;

I know it hurts her,—­though she

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

In such a spring-like way?

How can she lay her glasses down,

And say she reads as well,

When through a double convex

She just makes out to spell?

Her father—­grandpapa I

This erring lip its smiles—­Vowed she should make the finest

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

In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,

My grandsire brought her back;(By daylight, lest some rabid

Might follow on the track “Ah!” said my grandsire, as he

Some powder in his pan,“What could this lovely creature

Against a desperate man!”Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,

Nor bandit cavalcade,

Tore from the trembling father’s

His all-accomplished maid.

For her how happy had it

And Heaven had spared to

To see one sad, ungathered

On my ancestral tree.