Staunch Republican was she,
Wholly, absolutely,
Till hell freezes over;
Solid as a diamond
Plumb back to Abraham Lincoln.
(Don’t call him “Abe”;
I hear he didn’t like it.)
She endured the bad years—
The terms of the opposition:
The New Deal, the New Frontier,
The New Society—
But with scorn, anguish, horror.
“The Democrats,” she scoffed,
“Don’t even know what makes a
pig’s tail curl.”
When it happened—after Roosevelt’s
fourth election—
That her calf caught a leg in a fence
And crippled it wholly, absolutely,
She cried, “It’s that man
in the White House!”