Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/160

POEMS OF NEW ENGLAND Asking if beldames

Out of the past,

Old fairy godmothers,

Always could last?

No! One Thanksgiving,

Bitterly cold,

After they took her home

(Ever so old),

In her great chair she sank,

There to find peace;

Died in her ancient dress—

Poor old Lucrece.

HUNTINGTON HOUSE

, Ladies Huntington, your father served, we know,

As aide-de-camp to Washington—you often told us so;

And when you sat you side by side in that ancestral pew,

We knew his ghost sat next the door, and very proud of you.

Ladies, Ladies Huntington, like you there are no more:

Nancy, Sarah, Emily, Louise,—proud maidens four;

Nancy tall and angular, Louise a rosy dear,

And Emily as fine as lace but just a little sere.

What was it, pray, your life within the mansion grand and old,

Four dormers in its gambrel-roof, their shingles grim with mould?

How dwelt you in your spinsterhood, ye ancient virgins lone,

From infancy to bag-and-muff so resolutely grown?

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