Classic Poem

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 culte 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 neighbours murmured, “What a shame!”
(And wished their husbands did the same.)

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,
She realised how few had found
A home as peaceful as her own,
And saw how pleasant it may be
To wed a chronic absentee.

Her husband's absence she enjoyed,
Nor ever asked him where he went,
Thinking him harmlessly employed
Discovering some continent.
Had he been always in, no doubt,
Some day she would have found him out.

A melancholy thing it is
How few have known or understood
The manifold advantages
Of such herbaceous widowhood!
What is it ruins married lives
But husbands? (Not to mention wives?)

O wedded couples of to-day,
Pray take these principles to heart,
And copy the Columbian way
Of living happily apart,
And so, to you, at any rate,
Shall marriage be a “blessed state.”