An Elective Course

The Sisters' Tragedy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE

The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
Is all my Latin, all my
Greek;
The only sciences I know
Are frowns that gloom and
smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet
geography;
No scholarship have I but such
As teaches me to
love her much.

Why should I strive to read the skies,
Who know the midnight
of her eyes?
Why should I go so very far
To learn what
heavenly bodies are!
Not Berenice's starry hair
With Fanny's
tresses can compare;
Not Venus on a cloudless night,

Enslaving Science with her light,
Ever reveals so much as
when
SHE stares and droops her lids again.

If Nature's secrets are forbidden
To mortals, she may keep
them hidden.
AEons and aeons we progressed
And did not let
that break our rest;
Little we cared if Mars o'erhead
Were or
were not inhabited;
Without the aid of Saturn's rings
Fair
girls were wived in those far springs;
Warm lips met ours and
conquered us
Or ere thou wert, Copernicus!

Graybeards, who seek to bridge the chasm
'Twixt man to-day
and protoplasm,
Who theorize and probe and gape,
And finally
evolve an ape--
Yours is a harmless sort of cult,
If you are
pleased with the result.
Some folks admit, with cynic grace,

That you have rather proved your case.
These dogmatists are so
severe!
Enough for me that Fanny's here,
Enough that, having
long survived
Pre-Eveic forms, she HAS arrived--
An
illustration the completest
Of the survival of the sweetest.

Linnaeus, avaunt! I only care
To know what flower she wants
to wear.
I leave it to the addle-pated
To guess how pinks
originated,
As if it mattered! The chief thing
Is that we
have them in the Spring,
And Fanny likes them. When they
come,
I straightway send and purchase some.
The Origin of
Plants--go to!
Their proper end _I_ have in view.

O loveliest book that ever man
Looked into since the world
began
Is Woman! As I turn those pages,
As fresh as in the
primal ages,
As day by day I scan, perplext,
The ever subtly
changing text,
I feel that I am slowly growing
To think no
other work worth knowing.
And in my copy--there is none
So
perfect as the one I own--
I find no thing set down but such

As teaches me to love it much.