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.