Earlier Poems (1830-1836) | Page 4

us the sweetest smile.
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.
REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN
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!
DAILY TRIALS
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.
EVENING
BY A TAILOR
DAY hath put on his jacket, and around?His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.?Here will I lay me on the velvet grass,?That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs,?And hold communion with the things about me.?Ah me! how lovely is the golden braid?That binds the skirt of night's descending robe!?The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads,?Do make a music like to rustling satin,?As the light breezes smooth their downy nap.
Ha! what is this that rises to my touch,?So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage??It is, it is that deeply injured flower,?Which boys do flout us with;--but yet I love thee,?Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout.?Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright?As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath?Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air;?But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau,?Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences,?And growing portly in his sober garments.
Is that a swan that rides upon the water??Oh no, it is that other gentle bird,?Which is the patron of our noble calling.?I well remember, in my early years,?When these young hands first closed upon a goose;?I have a scar upon my thimble finger,?Which chronicles the hour of young ambition.?My father was a tailor, and his father,?And my sire's grandsire, all of them were