P. 18.
THE
True Grecian Bend
A
STORY IN VERSE
BY
Larry Leigh,
“Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?”—Milton
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
J. S. REDFIELD, PUBLISHER
140 FULTON STREET
1868
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
J. S. REDFIELD,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Eastern District of New York.
Edward O. Jenkins,
PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER,
No. 20 North William St.
[5]
THE
True Grecian Bend.
A woman in France got the spinal disease,
And from that sad moment she had no more ease;
To add to her anguish, she very soon found,
Oh, horrors! her back was becoming quite round.
[6]
The spasms of physical pain she endured,
Were keen, I assure you, and could not be cured;
But bad as these were, it seems, on the whole,
They could not compare with the pangs of her soul.
For I must inform you, O dear reader mine—
(I’m in my third verse, and indeed it is time)—
That our stylish Parisian was Fashion’s dear slave,
And to its sweet service her brain and time gave.
[7]
If she had been poet or artist or sage,
Or one of “the women,” so called, “of the age,”
With missions to Art, or the indigent poor,
Her crooked vertébra she might well endure.
For ’tis of no consequence, surely, I say,
If strong-minded women who flaunt in our day
Their rights to more freedom for work and for speech
Are placed by disease quite beyond the world’s reach.
[8]
Such women belong to that low, common kind
Who assert that an active condition of mind
...