GRIMALKIN
AN ELEGY ON PETER, AGED TWELVE
In vain the kindly call: in vain
The plate for which thou once wast fain
At morn and noon and daylight's wane,
O King of mousers.
No more I hear thee purr and purr
As in the frolic days that were,
When thou didst rub thy velvet fur
Against my trousers.
How empty are the places where
Thou erst wert frankly debonair,
Nor dreamed a dream of feline care,
A capering kitten.
The sunny haunts where, grown a cat,
You pondered this, considered that,
The cushioned chair, the rug, the mat,
By firelight smitten.
Although of few thou stoodst in dread,
How well thou knew a friendly tread,
And what upon thy back and head
The stroking hand meant.
A passing scent could keenly wake
Thy eagerness for chop or steak,
Yet, Puss, how rarely didst thou break
The eighth commandment.
Though brief thy life, a little span
Of days compared with that of man,
The time allotted to thee ran
In smoother metre.
Now with the warm earth o'er thy breast,
O wisest of thy kind and best,
Forever mayst thou softly rest,
In pace, Peter.
One only has to read this poem to feel that Mr. Scollard knew what it is to love a gentle, intelligent, affectionate cat—made so by kind treatment.
To François Coppée the cat is as sacred as it was to the Egyptians of old. The society of his feline pets is to him ever delightful and consoling, and it may have inspired him to write some of his most melodious verses. Nevertheless he is not the cat's poet. It was Charles Cros who wrote:—
"Chatte blanche, chatte sans tache,
Je te demande dans ces vers
Quel secret dort dans tes yeux verts,
Quel sarcasme sous ta moustache?"
Here is a version in verse of the famous "Kilkenny Cats":—
"O'Flynn, she was an Irishman, as very well was known,
And she lived down in Kilkenny, and she lived there all alone,
With only six great large tom-cats that knowed their ways about;
And everybody else besides she scrupulously shut out."
"Oh, very fond of cats was she, and whiskey, too, 'tis said,
She didn't feed 'em very much, but she combed 'em well instead:
As may be guessed, these large tom-cats did not get very sleek
Upon a combing once a day and a 'haporth' once a week.
"Now, on one dreary winter's night O'Flynn she went to bed
With a whiskey bottle under her arm, the whiskey in her head.
The six great large tom-cats they all sat in a dismal row,
And horridly glared their hazy eyes, their tails wagged to and fro.
"At last one grim graymalkin spoke, in accents dire to tell,
And dreadful were the words which in his horrid whisper fell:
And all the six large tom-cats in answer loud did squall,
'Let's kill her, and let's eat her, body, bones, and all.'
"Oh, horrible! Oh, terrible! Oh, deadly tale to tell!
When the sun shone through the window-hole all seemed still and well:
The cats they sat and licked their paws all in a merry ring.
But nothing else in all the house looked like a living thing.
"Anon they quarrelled savagely—they spit, they swore, they hollered:
At last these six great large tom-cats they one another swallered:
And naught but one long tail was left in that once peaceful dwelling,
And a very tough one, too, it was—it's the same that I've been telling."
By far more artistic is the version for which I am indebted to Miss Katharine Eleanor Conway, herself a poet of high order and a lover of cats.