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; My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Her father grandpapa! forgive 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.' 10 2 They braced my aunt against a board, 30 They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, So, when my precious aunt was done, Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Tore from the trembling father's arms And Heaven had spared to me 40 1831. The poem was suggested by the sight of a figure well known to Bostonians [in 1831 or 1832], that of Major Thomas Melville, the last of the cocked hats,' as he was sometimes called. The Major had been a personable young man, very evidently, and retained evidence of it in The monumental pomp of age which had something imposing and something odd about it for youthful eyes like mine. He was often pointed at as one of the Indians' of the famous Boston Tea-Party' of 1774. His aspect among the crowds of a later generation reminded me of a withered leaf which has held to its stem through the storms of autumn and winter, and finds itself still clinging to its bough while the new growths of spring are bursting their buds and spreading their foliage all around it. I make this explanation for the benefit of those who have been puzzled by the lines, The way in which it came to be written in a somewhat singular measure was this. I had become a little known as a versifier, and I thought that one or two other young writers were following my efforts with imitations, not meant as parodies and hardly to be consid ered improvements on their models. I determined to write in a measure which would at once betray any copyist. So far as it was suggested by any previous poem, the echo must have come from Campbell's 'Battle of the Baltic,' with its short terminal lines, such as the last of these two, By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore. But I do not remember any poem in the same measure, except such as have been written since its publication. (HOLMES.) Holmes wrote to his publishers in 1894: 'I have lasted long enough to serve as an illustration of my own poem.. It was with a smile on my lips that I wrote it; I cannot read it without a sigh of tender remembrance. I hope it will not sadden my older readers, while it may amuse some of the younger ones to whom its experiences are as yet only floating fancies.' Lincoln called the poem inexpressibly touching,' and knew it by heart. Holmes possessed a copy of it written out by Edgar Allan Poe. Whittier (Prose Works, vol. iii, p. 381) called it a unique compound of humor and pathos.' 1831 or 1832. LA GRISETTE 20 30 1833.2 And only left to memory's trance A shadow and a name. The dark Italian, loving much, The few strange words my lips had taught Thy timid voice to speak, Their gentler signs, which often brought The trailing of thy long loose hair All, all returned, more sweet, more fair; I walked where saint and virgin keep I knew that thou hadst woes to weep, I watched where Genevieve was laid, And when the morning sun was bright, When wind and wave were calm, And flamed, in thousand-tinted light, The rose of Notre Dame, I wandered through the haunts of men, Till, frowning o'er Saint Etienne, 10 20 30 Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a A thousand rubs had flattened down each Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes, little cherub's nose, I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer; I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here. 'Tis but the fool that loves excess; hast thou a drunken soul? To judge by what is still on hand, at least Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my a hundred loads. 20 silver bowl! 'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night I love the memory of the past, — its was closing dim, pressed yet fragrant flowers, The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its towers; Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed, my eyes grow moist and dim, To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim. A PROFESSIONAL BALLAD THERE was a young man in Boston town, He bought him a stethoscope nice and new, All mounted and finished and polished down, With an ivory cap and a stopper too. |