To many an old cat since.
This translation was by Mrs. Browning; many others have tried it with success. Alfred de Musset apostrophized his cats in verse. Paul de Koch frequently describes a favourite cat in his novels. Hoffman, the German novelist, introduces cats into his weird and fantastic tales, and Poe has given us The Black Cat. Keats composed a
Sonnet to a Cat:
Cat, who has passed thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroyed? How many tidbits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears, but prythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me, and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick;