When lovely Woman stoops to smoke

(A vice in which she often glories),

Or sees the somewhat doubtful joke

In after-dinner stories,

Who is it to her bedroom rushes

To hide the fervor of her blushes?

When Susan’s skirt’s a trifle short,

Or Mary’s manner rather skittish,

Who is it, with a fretful snort

(So typically British),

Emits prolonged and startled cries,

Suggestive of a pained surprise?

Who is it, tell me, in effect,

Who loves to centre her attentions

On all who wilfully neglect

Society’s conventions,

And seems eternally imbued

With saponaceous rectitude?

’Tis Mrs. Grundy, deaf and blind

To anything the least romantic,

Combining with a narrow mind

A point of view pedantic,

Since no one in the world can stop her

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!