KITTEN POEMS

The Shadow Kitten

There's a funny little kitten that tries to look like me,
But though I'm round and fluffy, he's as flat as flat can be;
And when I try to mew to him he never makes a sound,
And when I jump into the air he never leaves the ground.
.....

Oliver Herford

Poems For Piraye (9 To 10 O-clock Poems)

Remembering you is good
in prison
amid the news
of victory and death
.....

Nazim Hikmet

An Alphabet

A is the Alphabet, A at its head;
A is an Antelope, agile to run.
B is the Baker Boy bringing the bread,
Or black Bear and brown Bear, both begging for bun.
.....

Christina Rossetti

My Favoured Fare

Some poets sing of scenery;
Some to fair maids make sonnets sweet.
A fig for love and greenery,
Be mine a song of things to eat.
.....

Robert Service

Goody Two-shoes.

Versified by Mrs. Clara Doty Bates.


Two-Shoes, Two-Shoes,
.....

Clara Doty Bates

Lullaby For The Cat

Minnow, go to sleep and dream,
Close your great big eyes;
Round your bed Events prepare
The pleasantest surprise.
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

Righteous Anger

THE lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer:
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.
.....

James Stephens

Revenge

A spitcat sate on a garden gate
And a snapdog fared beneath;
Careless and free was his mien, and he
Held a fiddle-string in his teeth.
.....

Ambrose Bierce

At The "atlantic" Dinner

I suppose it's myself that you're making allusion to
And bringing the sense of dismay and confusion to.
Of course some must speak, - they are always selected to,
But pray what's the reason that I am expected to?
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Culture And Cops

Five nights agone I lay at rest
On my suburban couch.
My trousers on the bedpost hung,
Red gold within their pouch.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Out O' The Fire.

[As Told in 1880.]

Year of '71, children, middle of the fall,
On one fearful night, children, we well-nigh lost our all.
.....

Will Carleton

The Cottager To Her Infant

THE days are cold, the nights are long,
The north-wind sings a doleful song;
Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
.....

William Wordsworth

Bereaved

ONE day as I came down by Jarrow,
Engirt by a crowd on a stone,
A woman sat moaning, and sorrow
Seized all who took heed to her moan.
.....

Joseph Skipsey

At The

DECEMBER 15, 1874

I SUPPOSE it's myself that you're making allusion to
And bringing the sense of dismay and confusion to.
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sarah Walker

It was very hot. Not a breath of air was stirring throughout the western wing of the Greyport Hotel, and the usual feverish life of its four hundred inmates had succumbed to the weather. The great veranda was deserted; the corridors were desolated; no footfall echoed in the passages; the lazy rustle of a wandering skirt, or a passing sigh that was half a pant, seemed to intensify the heated silence. An intoxicated bee, disgracefully unsteady in wing and leg, who had been holding an inebriated conversation with himself in the corner of my window pane, had gone to sleep at last and was snoring. The errant prince might have entered the slumberous halls unchallenged, and walked into any of the darkened rooms whose open doors gaped for more air, without awakening the veriest Greyport flirt with his salutation. At times a drowsy voice, a lazily interjected sentence, an incoherent protest, a long-drawn phrase of saccharine tenuity suddenly broke off with a gasp, came vaguely to the ear, as if indicating a half-suspended, half-articulated existence somewhere, but not definite enough to indicate conversation. In the midst of this, there was the sudden crying of a child.

I looked up from my work. Through the camera of my jealously guarded window I could catch a glimpse of the vivid, quivering blue of the sky, the glittering intensity of the ocean, the long motionless leaves of the horse-chestnut in the road, all utterly inconsistent with anything as active as this lamentation. I stepped to the open door and into the silent hall.

.....

Bret Harte (francis)

To A Young Ass, Its Mother Being Tethered Near It

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race!
I love the languid patience of thy face:
And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread,
And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head.
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ch 03 On The Excellence Of Contentment Story 23

I heard about a wealthy man who was as well known for his avarice as Hatim Tai for his liberality. Outwardly he displayed the appearance of wealth but inwardly his sordid nature was so dominant that he would not for his life give a morsel of bread to anyone or bestow a scrap upon the kitten of Abu Harirah or throw a bone to the dog of the companions of the cave. In short, no one had seen the door of his house open or his table-doth spread.

The dervish got nothing of his food except the smell.
The fowl picked up the crumbs after his bread-dinner.
.....

Saadi Shirazi

The Mother's Return

A MONTH, sweet Little-ones, is past
Since your dear Mother went away,---
And she tomorrow will return;
Tomorrow is the happy day.
.....

William Wordsworth

Empire Builders

Captain Temple, D.S.O.,
With his banjo and retriever.
"Rough, I know, on poor old Flo,
But, by Jove! I couldn't leave her."
.....

Arthur Conan Doyle

Retrospection

After C. S. C.
When the hunter-star Orion
(Or, it may be, Charles his Wain)
Tempts the tiny elves to try on
.....

Sir Arthur Quiller-couch

Melinda's Complaint

By the side of a glimmering fire,
Melinda sat pensively down,
Impatient of rural esquire,
And vex'd to be absent from Town.
.....

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

To Mary

I.
How, my dear Mary, -- are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Puritan's Ballad

My love came up from Barnegat,
The sea was in his eyes;
He trod as softly as a cat
And told me terrible lies.
.....

Elinor Morton Wylie

Sorrow For A Favourite Tabby Cat, Who Left This Scene Of Troubles, Friday Night, Nov. 26, 1819.

Let brutish hearts, as hard as stones,
Mock The weak Muse's tender moans,
As now she wails o'er Titty's bones
With anguish deep;
.....

John Clare

Morning Lament

OH thou cruel deadly-lovely maiden,
Tell me what great sin have I committed,
That thou keep'st me to the rack thus fasten'd,
That thou hast thy solemn promise broken?
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Morning Lament.

Oh thou cruel deadly-lovely maiden,
Tell me what great sin have I committed,
That thou keep'st me to the rack thus fasten'd,
That thou hast thy solemn promise broken?
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Midsummer Idylls. Canto Iii.

I.

I take my goosequill for some recreation,
I'll have a pleasurable time to-night,
.....

Lennox Amott

The Eagle, The Sow, And The Cat

THE Queen of Birds, t'encrease the Regal Stock,
Had hatch'd her young Ones in a stately Oak,
Whose Middle-part was by a Cat possest,
And near the Root with Litter warmly drest,
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Amours De Voyage - Canto Iii

CANTO III.

Yet to the wondrous St. Peter's, and yet to the solemn Rotonda,
Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls,
.....

Arthur Hugh Clough

Coming Home

Five minutes here, and they must steal two more!
shameful! Here have I been five mortal years
and not seen home nor one dear kindred face,
and these abominable slugs, this guard,
.....

Augusta Davies Webster

English Bards And Scotch Reviewers: A Satire

'I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers'~Shakespeare

'Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Three Little Kittens.

Knit, knit, knit, knit!
See old white-capped Pussy sit,
Fairly gray with worry and care,
In her little straight-backed rocking-chair?
.....

Clara Doty Bates

The Deacon And His Daughter

He saved his soul and saved his pork,
With old time preservation;
He did not hold with creosote,
Or new plans of salvation;
.....

Isabella Valancy Crawford

Meeting Of The Alumni Of Harvard College

I THANK you, MR. PRESIDENT, you've kindly broke the ice;
Virtue should always be the first,--I 'm only SECOND VICE--
(A vice is something with a screw that's made to hold its jaw
Till some old file has played away upon an ancient saw).
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

English Bards And Scotch Reviewers: A Satire

'I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers'~Shakespeare

'Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
.....

George Gordon Byron

His Apologies

Master, this is Thy Servant. He is rising eight weeks old.
He is mainly Head and Tummy. His legs are uncontrolled.
But Thou hast forgiven his ugliness, and settled him on Thy knee . . .
Art Thou content with Thy Servant? He is
.....

Rudyard Kipling

English Bards And Scotch Reviewers: A Satire

'I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers'~Shakespeare

'Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
.....

George Gordon Byron

English Bards And Scotch Reviewers: A Satire

'I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers'~Shakespeare

'Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Lovers Of The Poor

arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
.....

Gwendolyn Brooks

Mother And Daughter- Sonnet Sequence

I
Young laughters, and my music! Aye till now
The voice can reach no blending minors near;
'Tis the bird's trill because the spring is here
.....

Augusta Davies Webster

The Deserted Homestead

Past a dull, grey plain where a world-old grief seems to brood o'er the silent land,
When the orbéd moon turns her tense, white face on the ominous waste of sand,
And the wind that steals by the dreamer feels like the touch of a phantom hand,

.....

Edward Dyson

The Deserted Homestead

PAST a dull, grey plain where a world-old grief seems to brood oâ??er the silent land,
When the orbéd moon turns her tense, white face on the ominous waste of sand,
And the wind that steals by the dreamer feels like the touch of a phantom hand,

.....

Edward George Dyson

The Lost Heir

'Oh where, and oh where
Is my bonny laddie gone?'
_Old Song_.

.....

Thomas Hood

The Whole Duty Of Kittens

When Human Folk at Table eat,
A Kitten must not mew for meat,
Or jump to grab it from the Dish,
(Unless it happens to be fish).
.....

Oliver Herford

Righteous Anger

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer:
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.
.....

David O'bruaidar

Kitten's Night Thought

When Human Folk put out the light,
And think they've made it dark as night,
A Pussy Cat sees every bit
As well as when the lights are lit.
.....

Oliver Herford

The Tale Of Custard The Dragon

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
.....

Ogden Nash

Facilis Ascensus

Up into the Cherry Tree,
Who should climb but little me,
With both my Paws I hold on tight,
And look upon a pleasant sight.
.....

Oliver Herford

The Colubriad

Close by the threshold of a door nailed fast
Three kittens sat; each kitten looked aghast;
I passing swift and inattentive by,
At the three kittens cast a careless eye,
.....

William Cowper

A Paraphrase Iii

How happens it, my cruel miss,
You're always giving me the mitten?
You seem to have forgotten this:
That you no longer are a kitten!
.....

Eugene Field