POET’S LAMENTATION FOR LOSS OF HIS CAT.

OPPRESSED with grief, in heavy strains I mourn The partner of my studies from me torn. How shall I sing? What numbers shall I choose? For in my favorite cat I’ve lost my Muse. No more I feel my mind with raptures fired, I want those airs that Puss so oft inspired; No crowding thoughts my ready fancy fill, Nor words run fluent from my easy quill. She in the study was my constant mate; There we together many evenings sate. Whene’er I felt my towering fancy fail, I stroked her head, her ears, her back and tail, And as I stroked improved my dying song From the sweet note of her melodious tongue: Her purs and mews so evenly kept time, She purred in metre, and she mewed in rhyme. Ofttimes when lost amidst poetic heat, She leaping on my knee there took her seat; There saw the throes that racked my laboring brain, And licked and clawed me to myself again. Then, friends, indulge my grief, and let me mourn, My cat is gone, ah! never to return! Now in my study all the tedious night, Alone I sit, and unassisted write; Look often round (O greatest cause of pain!) And view the numerous labors of my brain; Those quires of words arranged in pompous rhyme, Which braved the jaws of all-devouring time, Now undefended, and unwatched by cats, Are doomed a victim to the teeth of rats.