The Sleeping Beauty. Henry Stephen “Hall” Ludlow. Source: Fun (24 August 1887): 86. Courtesy of the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. Click on image to enlarge it. The poem beneath Ludlow’s drawing is a less scatological version of Jonathan Swift’s poem in which a lover realizing that a young beauty has the usual bodily functions.
All upon a summer day,
Like a sleeping nymph she lay,
Wooed to slumber by the ray
Of the sun at noon.
And as Dion watched the boy,
Young Endymion, fair and coy,
Wrapt in dreams of love and joy,
’Neath the silver moon,
So, beside her form I stept,
And my vigil near her kept.
Ah! this time the goddess slept,
And the youth adored.
Yes, the myth was thus reversed,
But the pretty fancy nursd
In my brain was soon dispersed —
Angelina snored!
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Last modified 28 April 2016