In the midst of dinner, my mistress’s favorite cat leaped into her lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking weavers at work; and, turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of that animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as I computed by the view of her head and one of her paws, while her mistress was feeding and stroking her. The fierceness of the cat’s countenance altogether discomposed me, though I stood at the farther end of the table, above fifty feet off, and though my mistress held her fast, for fear she might give a spring and seize me in her talons. But it happened that there was no danger, for she took not the least notice of me, although my master placed me within three yards of her.
As I have been always told, and have found true by experience in my travels, that flying, or discovering fear before a fierce animal, is a certain way to make it pursue or attack you, I resolved, in this dangerous juncture, to show no manner of concern. I walked with intrepidity five or six times before the very head of the cat, and came within half a yard of her; whereupon she drew herself back, as if she were afraid of me. I had less apprehension concerning the dogs, whereof three or four came into the room,—as it is usual in farmers’ houses,—one of which was a mastiff, equal in bulk to four elephants, and a greyhound somewhat taller than the mastiff, but not so large.
—Jonathan Swift.
TO A WATER-FOWL
W. C. Bryant
Whither midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
The desert and illimitable air,—
Lone wandering, but not lost.