To a Cat

To a Cat

Original Text
Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works, 2 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1924): II, 1093-95.
I
1Stately, kindly, lordly friend,
2    Condescend
3Here to sit by me, and turn
4Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
5Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
6On the golden page I read.
7All your wondrous wealth of hair,
8    Dark and fair,
9Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
10As the clouds and beams of night,
11Pays my reverent hand's caress
12Back with friendlier gentleness.
13Dogs may fawn on all and some
14    As they come;
15You, a friend of loftier mind,
16Answer friends alone in kind.
17Just your foot upon my hand
18Softly bids it understand.
19Morning round this silent sweet
20    Garden-seat
21Sheds its wealth of gathering light,
22Thrills the gradual clouds with might,
23Changes woodland, orchard, heath,
24Lawn, and garden there beneath.
25Fair and dim they gleamed below:
26    Now they glow
27Deep as even your sunbright eyes,
28Fair as even the wakening skies.
29Can it not or can it be
30Now that you give thanks to see?
31May not you rejoice as I,
32    Seeing the sky
33Change to heaven revealed, and bid
34Earth reveal the heaven it hid
35All night long from stars and moon,
36Now the sun sets all in tune?
37What within you wakes with day
38    Who can say?
39All too little may we tell,
40Friends who like each other well,
41What might haply, if we might,
42Bid us read our lives aright.
II
43Wild on woodland ways your sires
44    Flashed like fires:
45Fair as flame and fierce and fleet
46As with wings on wingless feet
47Shone and sprang your mother, free,
48Bright and brave as wind or sea.
49Free and proud and glad as they,
50    Here to-day
51Rests or roams their radiant child,
52Vanquished not, but reconciled,
53Free from curb of aught above
54Save the lovely curb of love.
55Love through dreams of souls divine
56    Fain would shine
57Round a dawn whose light and song
58Then should right our mutual wrong --
59Speak, and seal the love-lit law
61Dreams were theirs; yet haply may
62    Dawn a day
63When such friends and fellows born,
64Seeing our earth as fair at morn,
65May for wiser love's sake see
66More of heaven's deep heart than we.

Notes

60] Assisi's seer: St. Francis of Assisi. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1893
Publication Notes
The Athenaeum (Dec. 30, 1893): 914; then Astrophel and Other Poems (): 197-201.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO (1999).
Rhyme