[575] To Mrs. Reynolds' Cat

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian, <suresh@>:

Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric,
  How many mice and rats hast in thy days
  Destroy'd? -- How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears -- but pr'ythee do not stick
  Thy latent talons in me -- and upraise
  Thy gentle mew -- and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.

Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists --
  For all the wheezy asthma, -- and for all
Thy tail's tip is nick'd off -- and though the fists
  Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
  In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.

	-- John Keats

Keats doesn't need any introduction anyway ;)  As for the poem itself, it's
a charming commentary on an old cat. Light-hearted, enjoyable - and
brilliant.

Suresh.

[thomas adds]

A classical Petrarchan sonnet: iambic pentameter, the octave rhyming
_abbaabba_, the sestet _cdcdcd_. It's a testimony to the power of the sonnet
that even the Romantics, with their emphasis on freedom and spontaneity,
continued to write notable pieces in this form... today's poem may not soar
to the heights of Keats' great "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" [1],
but it does not aspire to do so in the first place. Instead, as Suresh said,
it remains an excellent example of light verse, charming and enjoyable.

thomas.

[1] (poem #12)