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Jeanne Dininni
Shilpa KarhikJohn Keats
April 25th 2006 11:41
John Keats is one of the most well known of the English Romantics, even though he only lived to the age of 25 and didn't have time to build up a very large oeuvre. Yeats wrote of him
I see a schoolboy when I think of him,
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made – being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper –
Luxurious song.
While he did write odes to goddesses, seasons, other poets, Grecian urns and other typically "poetic" entities, he didn't shrink from appreciating the smaller things in life, like women, snuff and cats, the latter of which, in my opinion, have more in common with goddesses than women or snuff do. I don't know where I'm headed with this, so rather than expounding my love for cats, I'll let Keats do it for me.
To Mrs. Reynolds's Cat
by John Keats
Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? -- How many tidbits 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.
I see a schoolboy when I think of him,
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made – being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper –
Luxurious song.
While he did write odes to goddesses, seasons, other poets, Grecian urns and other typically "poetic" entities, he didn't shrink from appreciating the smaller things in life, like women, snuff and cats, the latter of which, in my opinion, have more in common with goddesses than women or snuff do. I don't know where I'm headed with this, so rather than expounding my love for cats, I'll let Keats do it for me.
To Mrs. Reynolds's Cat
by John Keats
Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? -- How many tidbits 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.
Cat
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