The Entrapment of John Alden, or We Paint the Lily, We Beard Mr. Longfellow

Once there was a Pilgrim Father named Miles Standish,

Because despite many misconceptions few Pilgrim Fathers were
named Praise-God Barebones or something equally outlandish.

Miles Standish was ordinarily a direct man, but in affairs of the
heart he was inclined to crawfish,

Indeed, he might have been termed Standish-offish.

He had moved from Plymouth to Duxbury. and he had a friend who
was a born bachelor named John Alden

Who had also moved to Duxbury, though he might have done better to
plump for Nahant or Saugus or Malden.

Well, Miles Standish fell in love with a Pilgrim maiden named
Priscilla Mullens,

But whenever he approached her she fell into a fit of the sulks
or sullens,

And he was afraid that if he offered her marriage in person she
would grow even acider,

So the upshot was that he persuaded John Alden to be his ambassador,

And the offshoot of the upshot was that Priscilla welcomed John
Alden as Penelope might have welcomed Odysseus

And she baked him a pumpkin pie that was simply delysseus,

And she evinced a frightening tendency to mingle,

And when he transmitted Miles Standish’s proposal to her she asked
him why he didn’t speak for himself, but he really had nothing
to say for himself except that he enjoyed being single.

Had he been a Method actor preparing for a play set in Greenpoint
he could have told himself, “I can ad lib dis,”

But now with the image of Miles Standish looking over one shoulder
and an amorous maiden snuggling against the other he stood
silent between Priscilla and Charybdis.

This silence resulted in a union which eventually produced eleven
children, several of them born in August,

And a recently discovered diary of John Alden’s reveals that he
often wished that instead of joining Miles Standish in
Duxbury he had Nahanted or even Saugused.