Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, MY AUNT. My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! I know it hurts her, though she looks Her waist is ampler than her life, My aunt! my poor deluded aunt! Why will she train that winter curl How can she lay her glasses down, When, through a double convex lens, 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; O never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins. So, when my precious aunt was done, "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook “What could this lovely creature do Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Tore from the trembling father's arms For her how happy had it been! And Heaven had spared to me Eleven years later we find Dr. Holmes occupying the distinguished position of Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard./ Holmes, more properly perhaps than any other American poet, may be styled the Postprandial Poet, not a few of his verses having been delivered on occasions of medical, literary, alumnal, or social feasts. Of this sort are Terpsichore, The Stethoscope Song, A Modest Request, and many others. We quote THE STETHOSCOPE SONG. THERE was a young man in Boston town, It happened a spider within did crawl, The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue, The second was smaller, and thin and long; So there was a concert between the two, Now being from Paris recently, This fine young man would show his skill; Some said that his liver was short of bile, He was crammed with tubercles up to his eyes. This fine young man then up stepped he, But since the case is a desperate one, To explore his chest it may be well; Then out his stethoscope he took, And on it placed his curious ear; Mon Dieu! said he, with a knowing look, The bourdonnement is very clear, Amphoric buzzing, as I'm alive! Five doctors took their turn to hear; There's empyema beyond a doubt; They tapped the patient; so he died. Now such as hate new-fashioned toys They said that rattles were made for boys There was an old lady had long been sick, And what was the matter none did know: Her pulse was slow, though her tongue was quick; To her this knowing youth must go. So there the nice old lady sat, With phials and boxes all in a row; She asked the young doctor what he was at, Now, when the stethoscope came out, The bruit de rape and the bruit de scie If he a case like this could find! Now, when the neighboring doctors found Then six young damsels, slight and frail, And short of breath on mounting stairs. They all made rhymes with "sighs" and "skies," And dieted, much to their friends' surprise, So fast their little hearts did bound, The rale siflant, and rale sonore. He shook his head;-there's grave disease,- The six young damsels wept aloud, This poor young man was all aghast; To practice in a country town. The doctors being very sore, A stethoscope they did devise, That had a rammer to clear the bore, Now use your ears, all you that can, But don't forget to mind your eyes, Or you may be cheated, like this young man, Urania: a Rhymed Lesson was delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association in 1846. In 1852, Dr. Holmes appeared before the public in a course of Lectures on the English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, in which he manifested a preference for the bold and sparkling poets, the Scotts and Byrons, as contrasted with the quiet and thoughtful, the Wordsworths./ Our author began writing for the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, the year in which that magazine was started. His articles were entitled The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. These were begun as opinions and observations, wittily expressed, on conversational topics of the day; but they gradually assumed a dramatic form, and their characters grew into the warm personages of a novel./ A second series soon followed, called, this time, The Pro · fessor of the Breakfast Table, which preserved rather a more sober, pathetic, and theological tone than the first. Next in order of time appeared The Professor's Story, or Elsie Venner: a Romance of Destiny./ In this work Dr Holmes ventured in a new field of |