F you have Æsthetic notions of the classic beauty rare,

You would never for a moment say that Nature took the prize,

For the elegance of figure, or tint upon her hair,

Of Mother Becca Canticrank, you wouldn't like her eyes;

Her nose you couldn't admirate,

Her teeth are in a chippy state,

Her voice is like a corncrake, her manner like a knife;

A cutting way of dealing

With sentimental feeling,

You wouldn't altogether care to choose her for a wife.

But ah! she is the casket of a compensating excellence,

The odour of a sanctity peculiarly her own,

She knows she is, without a doubt,

Intensely moral out and out,

And so she sits in judgment on a self-constructed throne.

As Censor of corruptousness,

Of Nature in voluptousness,

She rails in holy horror, with a Puritanic rage,

That beauty's form is shocking,

In semi-raiment mocking,

Her own upholstered scragginess in picture or on stage.

Her loathing is the ballet;

For lo! from court and alley,

The thousand Cinderellas are fairy clad and bright,

A direr deed of sinning—

By dint of beauty winning