The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Complete - Oliver Wendell Holmes

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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.

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      I SAW the curl of his waving lash,

       And the glance of his knowing eye,

       And I knew that he thought he was cutting a dash,

       As his steed went thundering by.

      And he may ride in the rattling gig,

       Or flourish the Stanhope gay,

       And dream that he looks exceeding big

       To the people that walk in the way;

      But he shall think, when the night is still,

       On the stable-boy's gathering numbers,

       And the ghost of many a veteran bill

       Shall hover around his slumbers;

      The ghastly dun shall worry his sleep,

       And constables cluster around him,

       And he shall creep from the wood-hole deep

       Where their spectre eyes have found him!

      Ay! gather your reins, and crack your thong,

       And bid your steed go faster;

       He does not know, as he scrambles along,

       That he has a fool for his master;

      And hurry away on your lonely ride,

       Nor deign from the mire to save me;

       I will paddle it stoutly at your side

       With the tandem that nature gave me!

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      BY A SENSITIVE MAN

      OH, there are times

       When all this fret and tumult that we hear

       Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear

       His own dull chimes.

      Ding dong! ding dong!

       The world is in a simmer like a sea

       Over a pent volcano—woe is me

       All the day long!

      From crib to shroud!

       Nurse o'er our cradles screameth lullaby,

       And friends in boots tramp round us as we die,

       Snuffling aloud.

      At morning's call

       The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,

       And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,

       Give answer all.

      When evening dim

       Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul,

       Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall—

       These are our hymn.

      Women, with tongues

       Like polar needles, ever on the jar;

       Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep fountains are

       Within their lungs.

      Children, with drums

       Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass;

       Peripatetics with a blade of grass

       Between their thumbs.

      Vagrants, whose arts

       Have caged some devil in their mad machine,

       Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans between,

       Come out by starts.

      Cockneys that kill

       Thin horses of a Sunday—men, with clams,

       Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams

       From hill to hill.

      Soldiers, with guns,

       Making a nuisance of the blessed air,

       Child-crying bellmen, children in despair,

       Screeching for buns.

      Storms, thunders, waves!

       Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill;

       Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still

       But in their graves.

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      BY

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