Misrepresentative Women

From thinking ev’rything improper.

The picture or the marble bust
At any public exhibition
Evokes her unconcealed disgust
And rouses her suspicion,
If human forms are shown to us
In puris naturalibus.

The bare, in any sense or shape.
She looks upon as wrong or faulty;
Piano-legs she likes to drape,
If they are too décoll’té;
For long with horror she has viewed
The naked Truth, for being nude.

On modern manners that efface
The formal modes of introduction
She is at once prepared to place
The very worst construction, —
And frowns, suspicious and sardonic,
On friendships that are termed Platonic.

The English restaurants must close
At twelve o’clock at night on Sunday,
To suit (or so we may suppose)
The taste of Mrs. Grundy;
On week-days, thirty minutes later,
Ejected guests revile the waiter.

A sense of humor she would vote
The sign of mental dissipations;
She scorns whatever might promote
The gaiety of nations;
Of lawful fun she seems no fonder
Than of the noxious dooblontonder!

And if you wish to make her blench
And snap her teeth together tightly,
Say something in Parisian French,
And close one optic slightly.
“Rien ne va plus! Enfin, alors!”
She leaves the room and slams the door!

O Mrs. Grundy, do, I beg,
To false conclusions cease from rushing,
And learn to name the human leg
Without profusely blushing!
No longer be (don’t think me rude)

That unalluring thing, the prude!
No more patrol the world, I pray,
In search of trifling social errors,
Let “What will Mrs. Grundy say?”
No longer have its terrors;
Leave diatribe and objurgation
To Mrs. Chant and Carrie Nation!

Mrs. Christopher Columbus

The bride grows pale beneath her veil,
The matron, for the nonce, is dumb,
Who listens to the tragic tale
Of Mrs. Christopher Columb:
Who lived and died (so says report)
A widow of the herbal sort.

Her husband upon canvas wings
Would brave the Ocean, tempest-tost;
He had a cult for finding things
Which nobody had ever lost,
And Mrs. C. grew almost frantic
When he discovered the Atlantic.

But nothing she could do or say
Would keep her Christopher at home;
Without delay he sailed away
Across what poets call “the foam,”
While neighbors murmured, “What a shame!”
And wished their husbands did the same.

He ventured on the highest C’s
That reared their heads above the bar,
Knowing the compass and the quays
Like any operatic star;
And funny friends who watched him do so
Would call him “Robinson Caruso.”

But Mrs. C. remained indoors,
And poked the fire and wound the clocks,
Amused the children, scrubbed the floors,
Or darned her absent husband’s socks.
(For she was far too sweet and wise
To darn the great explorer’s eyes.)

And when she chanced to look around
At all the couples she had known,
And realized how few had found
A home as peaceful as her own,
She saw how pleasant it may be