Impartiality - Free Audiobook

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! forgive
                 This erring lip its smiles—
               Vowed she should make the finest girl
                 Within a hundred miles;
               He sent her to a stylish school;
                 'Twas 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.