| 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 | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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;— | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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!" | 40 |
| |
| 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! | 45 |
| And Heaven had spared to me | |
| To see one sad, ungathered rose | |
| On my ancestral tree. | |
