The Cat s Elegy
THE ATS
ELEGY
By
GELETT BURGESS
and
BURGES JOHNSON
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1913
Copyright
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1913
Published March, 1913
The Cat s Elegy
259856
JfWJHE, tea-bell tolls for Nell
i to pass the tray,
^ The glowing cook winds
slowly up the clock,
The ashman homeward wends his
weary way
And leaves a trail of cinders round
the block.
NOW fade the dingy fences on
our sight,
And all the air is still, except,
maybe,
Where some street-organ, faintly
through the night,
Wafts "Holy City" and "The Bam
boo Tree."
SkVE that from yonder
sparsely slated roof
A moping Tom doth moan-
ingly complain
(While other felines darkly hold
aloof)
That his Maria lucklessly
was slain.
IV
NEATH the shade yon
dying pear tree sheds,
Where rest tomato cans on
ashy heaps,
Where cast-off garments line the
pansy beds,
The flattened form of poor Maria
sleeps.
THE wheezy call of milkmen
in the morn,
The cook s insistent, matuti
nal grouch,
The scissors grinder s harsh and rau
cous horn
No more shall rouse her from her
weedy couch.
VI
OR her no more shall wave
the threatening broom,
Or busy housewife scat her
*l from the chair,
No children run to chase her from
the room,
Or pampered dogs besiege her ii
her lair.
OFT sought she out appointed
rendezvous,
In dalliance spent the fair
est of her days,
Or nightly studied, with her art in
view,
The acoustic properties of alley- ways.
VIII
FT did the predatory cur
rejoice
To drive her, quivering, up
this lonely tree;
How jocund did she raise nocturnal
voice !
How cursed the lodgers, kept awake
at three!
LET not some groomed lap
cat e er decry
The humble realm of that
4 backyard obscure
The battered gate, the clothesline
whence there fly
The short and simple flannels
the poor.
THE boast of Tortoise-shell,
the pomp of Manx,
The Persian, bearing pedi-
gree profound,
All dread alike the catcher s nimble
shanks
The public highways lead but to the
pound.
XI
ULL many a nightly prowl
er, gaunt and lean;
Has filled this alley with his
music rare;
Full many a cat is born to howl un
seen,
And waste his sweetness on the city
NOR you, ye proud, impute to
him the sin,
Who in his nightshirt did
his window raise,
And, hurling down his missile at the
din,
Ended the joyance of her
heartfelt lays!
XIII
RETURNING from some
animated bust,
Back to his mansion, pale
and sick at heart,
Maria s voice provoked his latent
lust
For blood ; she fell a victim to her art.
>i
PERHAPS in this neglected
form has been
A soul that in Bubastis
might have reigned;
The Goddess Pasht have recognized
as kin;
Or ruled Kilkenny ere its glory waned.
FAR from the madding
crowd she was not f eased,
The while her vagrom fan
cies made her stray
Along the sequestered alley, where
she raised
The nightly noisy tenor of
her lay.
FOR who, to grim insomnia a
prey,
That weird elusive being e er
could mark?
Who has not raised his window in
dismay
And blindly cast some weapon
through the dark ?
YET on some pavement, soon
or late, there lies
The cat who tortures slum
ber while she prowls;
While from the tomb the voice of
Nature cries,
As some small urchin imitates her
howls.
UT Requies Cat, now that
she is dead
(Nine times she died, and
therefore quite deceased)
Approach and read (with friends to
hold thy head)
This touching tribute to the
little beast.
HERE lies poor Puss, with
collar unbedight,
A homeless cat, a thing of
skin and bone,
Full-throated rose her swan song on
the night,
And now the dust-heap claims her
for its own.
r
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