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Oliver Wendell HolmesOliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94) is less a good poet in the literary sense than in the popular sense, having written some of America’s most beloved chestnuts, including “Old Ironsides,” the poem which is said to have saved the U.S. Constitution from the scrap heap, and The Chambered Nautilus, an uplifting poem which never fails to fill this cynic’s eyes with tears. He must have been an indefatigable person, for he not only wrote prolifically, he was a trained physician, who spent the bulk of his working life teaching at Harvard and even serving for six years as dean of the Harvard Medical School. He is credited with naming The Atlantic Monthly. To the modern sensibility, Holmes’ poetry seems quaint, sentimental, didactic, a cobwebby sort of writing which was soon swept away by Walt Whitman with his big American boast and his long American line. Particularly egregious is the following poem about Holmes’ maiden aunt. Arguably, the poem has no excuse for being. It is nothing but a sappy, cliche-ridden lament which includes a dull narrative about the aunt’s early training in ladylike comportment. That section may have a certain value to feminist historians; as poetry, it has the depth of meaning of lawn furniture. One finishes this poem embarrassed for the aunt, who comes across as both an aging spinster still filling her hope chest and a bit of a nuisance. The phrase “virgin zone” is exceptionally unfortunate!
My AuntMy 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— 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;— O, 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 has it been! And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree. 
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