* * * * * 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―― Vow’d 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 pinch’d her feet, they singed her hair, They screw’d it up with pins,―― Oh, never mortal suffer’d 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-accomplish’d maid. For her how happy had it been! And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungather’d rose On my ancestral tree. * * * * * THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS. I WROTE some lines once on a time In wondrous merry mood, And thought, as usual, men would say They were exceeding good. They were so queer, so very queer, I laugh’d as I would die; Albeit, in the general way, A sober man am I. I call’d my servant, and he came: How kind it was of him, To mind a slender man like me, He of the mighty limb! “These to the printer,” I exclaim’d, And, in my humorous way, I added (as a trifling jest), “There’ll be the devil to pay.” He took the paper, and I watch’d, And saw him peep within; At the first line he read, his face Was all upon the grin. He read the next; the grin grew broad, And shot from ear to ear; He read the third; a chuckling noise I now began to hear. The fourth; he broke into a roar; The fifth, his waistband split; The sixth, he burst five buttons off, And tumbled in a fit.