Fat Aunt Bess is older than Time But her eyes still shine like a bright, new dime, Though two generations have gone to rest On the sleepy mountain of her breast. Wingate children in Wingate Hall, From the first weak cry in the bearing-bed She has petted and punished them, one and all, She has closed their eyes when they lay dead. She raised Marse Billy when he was puny, She cared for the Squire when he got loony, Fed him and washed him and combed his head, Nobody else would do instead. The matriarch of the weak and the young, The lazy crooning, comforting tongue. She has had children of her own, But the white-skinned ones are bone of her bone. They may not be hers, but she is theirs, And if the shares were unequal shares, She does not know it, now she is old. They will keep her out of the rain and cold. And some were naughty, and some were good, But she will be warm while they have wood, Rule them and spoil them and play physician With the vast, insensate force of tradition,