SAD MEMORIES
They tell me I am beautiful: they praise my
silken hair,
My little feet that silently slip on from stair to
stair:
They praise my pretty trustful face and innocent
grey eye;
Fond hands caress me oftentimes, yet would
that I might die!
Why was I born to be abhorr'd of man and bird
and beast?
The bullfinch marks me stealing by, and straight
his song hath ceased;
The shrewmouse eyes me shudderingly, then
flees; and worse than that,
The housedog he flees after me—why was I
born a cat?
Men prize the heartless hound who quits dry-
eyed his native land;
Who wags a mercenary tail and licks a tyrant
hand.
The leal true cat they prize not, that if e'er
compell'd to roam
Still flies, when let out of the bag, precipitately
home.
They call me cruel. Do I know if mouse or
song-bird feels?
I only know they make me light and salutary
meals:
And if, as 'tis my nature to, ere I devour I
tease'em,
Why should a low-bred gardener's boy pursue
me with a besom?
Should china fall or chandeliers, or anything but
stocks—
Nay stocks, when they're in flowerpots—the cat
expects hard knocks:
Should ever anything be missed—milk, coals,
umbrellas, brandy—
The cat's pitch'd into with a boot or any thing
that's handy.
"I remember, I remember," how one night I
"fleeted by,"
And gain'd the blessed tiles and gazed into the
cold clear sky.
"I remember, I remember, how my little lovers
came,"
And there, beneath the crescent moon, play'd
many a little game.
They fought—by good St Catharine,'twas a
fearsome sight to see
The coal-black crest, the glowering orbs, of
one gigantic He.
Like bow by some tall bowman bent at Hastings
or Poictiers,
His huge back curved, till none observed a
vestige of his ears:
He stood, an ebon crescent, flouting that ivory
moon;
Then raised the pibroch of his race, the Song
without a Tune;
Gleam'd his white teeth, his mammoth tail waved
. darkly to and fro,
As with one complex yell he burst, all claws,
upon the foe.
It thrills me now, that final Miaow—that weird
unearthly din:
Lone maidens heard it far away, and leap'd out
of their skin.
A potboy from his den o'erhead peep'd with a
scared wan face;
Then sent a random brickbat down, which
knock'd me into space.
Nine days I fell, or thereabouts: and, had we
not nine lives,
I wis I ne'er had seen again thy sausage-shop,
St Ives!
Had I, as some cats have, nine tails, how gladly
I would lick
The hand, and person generally, of him who
heaved that brick.
For me they fill the milkbowl up, and cull the
choice sardine:
But ah! I nevermore shall be the cat I once
have been!
The memories of that fatal night they haunt me
even now:
In dreams I see that rampant He, and tremble
at that Miaow.
——C. S. Calverley.