RPO -- John Keats : To Mrs. Reynold's Cat

John Keats (1795-1821)

To Mrs. Reynold's Cat

1Cat! who hast past thy grand climacteric,

2 How many mice and rats hast in thy days

3 Destroy'd?--how many tit bits stolen? Gaze

4With those bright languid segments green and prick

5Those velvet ears--but pr'ythee do not stick

6 Thy latent talons in me--and upraise

7 Thy gentle mew--and tell me all thy frays

8Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.

9Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists--

10 For all the wheezy asthma,--and for all

11Thy tail's tip is nicked off--and though the fists

12 Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,

13Still is that fur as soft as when the lists

14 In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.

Notes

1] Mrs Reynolds, mother of Keats' friend John Hamilton Reynolds. grand climacteric: "the 63rd year of life (63 = 7 × 9), supposed to be specially critical" (OED, "Climacteric," a. and n., B. 1).

6] latent: hidden.

7] mew: miaow (onomatopoetic).

12] maul: blow.

13] lists: fighting arena.

14] glass-bottled wall: a wall whose top is paved with shards of broken glass so as to discourage anyone climbing on or over it.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. W. Garrod, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958): 534 (text from autograph MS in Buffalo and Erie County Public Library).
First publication date: 1830
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2007
Recent editing: 1:2007/8/21*1:2007/8/21

Composition date: 16 January 1818
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbacdcdcd

Other poems by John Keats