Читать книгу Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor (Vol. 1&2) - Various Authors - Страница 22

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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 would 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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes.