150

DAILY TRIALS.

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!

MY AUNT.

O. W. HOLMES.

Y 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?

152

MY AUNT.

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 should 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 ;-

Oh, never mortal suffered more

In penance for her sins.

MY AUNT.

So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;

(By daylight, lest some rabid youth

Might follow in 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.

153

LINES IN A YOUNG LADY'S ALBUM.

THOMAS HOOd, Sen.

PRETTY task, Miss S

to ask

A Benedictine pen,

That cannot quite at freedom write

Like those of other men.

No lover's plaint my Muse must paint

To fill this page's span,

But be correct and recollect

I'm not a single man.

Pray only think for pen and ink

How hard to get along,

That may not turn on words that burn,

Or Love, the life of song!