Logos Virtual Library: Keats: To Mrs. Reynolds’s Cat

John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821)

To Mrs. Reynolds’s Cat

Cat! who hast passed thy grand climacteric,

How many mice and rats hast in thy days

Destroyed? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears—but prithee do not stick

Thy latent talons in me, and up-raise

Thy gentle mew, and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists—

For all thy wheezy asthma, and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nicked off, and though the fists

Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists

In youth thou enteredst on glass-bottled wall.