Cats

by Mark Bryant

Genres: Short Stories

Synopsis

From beautiful lyrics to madcap waggery, from the prime suspect in a partridge killing in ancient Greece to the medieval monk's cat Pangur Bán and encompassing odes, fables, stories, limericks, songs, nursery rhymes and more, Mark Bryant has compiled a wonderfully evocative collection of writing of all kinds on cats by those who love them. There are poems from Chaucer, Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, Shelley and Wordsworth; humorous pieces by Lewis Carroll, Ambrose Bierce, Edward Lear and Jerome K. Jerome; and other delights from writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Saki and Mark Twain. From ancient Egypt to the recent past, covering every genre, from humour and fantasy to romance and horror, and drawn from every part of the world, these stories, poems and excerpts from essays, letters, diaries and journals provide a collection to delight any cat-lover.

Release date: September 8, 2016

Publisher: Robinson

Print pages: 368

Sample

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John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92)



 

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A blazing fire, a warm rug, candles lit and curtains drawn, the kettle on for tea (nor do the ‘first circles’ despise the preference of a kettle to an urn, as the third or fourth may do), and finally, the cat before you, attracting your attention – it is a scene which everybody likes unless he has a morbid aversion to cats; which is not common. There are some nice inquirers, it is true, who are apt to make uneasy comparisons of cats with dogs – to say they are not so loving, that they prefer the house to the man, etc. But agreeably to the good old maxim, that ‘comparisons are odious’, our readers, we hope, will continue to like what is likable in anything, for its own sake, without trying to render it unlikable from its inferiority to something else – a process by which we might ingeniously contrive to put soot into every dish that is set before us, and to reject one thing after another, till we were pleased with nothing. Here is a good fireside, and a cat to it; and it would be our own fault, if, in removing to another house and another fireside, we did not take care that the cat removed with us. Cats cannot look to the moving of goods, as men do. If we would have creatures considerate towards us, we must be so towards them. It is not to be expected of everybody, quadruped or biped, that they should stick to us in spite of our want of merit, like a dog or a benevolent sage. Besides, stories have been told of cats very much to the credit of their benignity; such as their following a master about like a dog, waiting at a gentleman’s door to thank him for some obligation overnight, etc. And our readers may remember the history of the famous Godolphin Arabian, upon whose grave a cat that had lived with him in the stable went and stretched itself, and died.

Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)

The cat purrs, as if it applauded our consideration – and gently moves its tail. What an odd expression of the power to be irritable and the will to be pleased there is in its face, as it looks up at us! We must own, that we do not prefer a cat in the act of purring, or of looking in that manner. It reminds us of the sort of smile, or simmer (simper is too weak and fleeting a word) that is apt to be in the faces of irritable people when they are pleased to be in a state of satisfaction. We prefer, for a general expression, the cat in a quiet, unpretending state, and the human countenance with a look indicative of habitual grace and composure, as if it were not necessary to take any violent steps to prove its amiability – the ‘smile without a smile’, as the poet beautifully calls it [...]

Poor Pussy! she looks up at us again [...] and symbolically gives a twist of a yawn and a lick to her whiskers. Now she proceeds to clean herself all over, having a just sense of the demands of her elegant person – beginning judiciously with her paws, and fetching amazing tongues at her hind-hips. Anon, she scratches her neck with a foot of rapid delight, leaning her head towards it, and shutting her eyes, half to accommodate the action of the skin, and half to enjoy the luxury. She then rewards her paws with a few more touches; look at the action of her head and neck, how pleasing it is, the ears pointed forward, and the neck gently arching to and fro. Finally, she gives a sneeze, and another twist of mouth and whiskers, and then, curling her tail towards her front claws, settles herself on her hind quarters, in an attitude of bland meditation.

What does she think of – of her saucer of milk at breakfast? or of the thump she got yesterday in the kitchen for stealing the meat? or of her own meat, the Tartar’s dish, noble horse-flesh? or of her friend the cat next door, the most impassioned of serenaders? or of her little ones, some of whom are now large, and all of them gone? Is that among her recollections when she looks pensive? Does she taste of the noble prerogative-sorrows of man? [...]

That lapping of the milk out of the saucer is what one’s human thirst cannot sympathize with. It seems as if there could be no satisfaction in such a series of atoms of drink. Yet the saucer is soon emptied; and there is a refreshment to one’s ears in that sound of plashing with which the action is accompanied, and which seems indicative of a like comfort to Pussy’s mouth. Her tongue is thin, and can make a spoon of itself. This, however, is common to other quadrupeds with the cat, and does not, therefore, more particularly belong to our feline consideration. Not so the electricity of its coat, which gives out sparks under the hand; its passion for the herb valerian (did the reader ever see one roll in it? it is a mad sight) and other singular delicacies of nature, among which, perhaps, is to be reckoned its taste for fish, a creature with whose element it has so little to do, that it is supposed even to abhor it; though lately we read somewhere of a swimming cat, that used to fish for itself. And this reminds us of an exquisite anecdote of dear, dogmatic, diseased, thoughtful, surly, charitable Johnson, who would go out of doors himself, and buy oysters for his cat, because his black servant was too proud to do it! Not that we condemn the black, in those enslaving, unliberating days. He had a right to the mistake, though we should have thought better of him had he seen farther, and subjected his pride to affection for such a master. But Johnson’s true practical delicacy in the matter is beautiful. Be assured that he thought nothing of ‘condescension’ in it, or of being eccentric. He was singular in some things, because he could not help it. But he hated eccentricity. No: in his best moments he felt himself simply to be a man, and a good man too, though a frail – one that in virtue as well as humility, and in a knowledge of his ignorance as well as his wisdom, was desirous of being a Christian philosopher; and accordingly he went out, and bought food for his hungry cat, because his poor negro was too proud to do it, and there was nobody else in the way whom he had a right to ask. What must anybody that saw him have thought, as he turned up Bolt Court! But doubtless he went as secretly as possible – that is to say, if he considered the thing at all. His friend Garrick could not have done as much! He was too grand, and on the great ‘stage’ of life. Goldsmith could; but he would hardly have thought of it. Beauclerc might; but he would have thought it necessary to excuse it with a jest or a wager, or some such thing. Sir Joshua Reynolds, with his fashionable, fine-lady-painting hand, would certainly have shrunk from it. Burke would have reasoned himself into its propriety, but he would have reasoned himself out again. Gibbon! Imagine its being put into the head of Gibbon!! He and his bag-wig would have started with all the horror of a gentleman-usher; and he would have rung the bell for the cook’s-deputy’s-under-assistant-errand-boy.

Cats at firesides live luxuriously, and are the picture of comfort; but lest they should not bear their portion of trouble in this world, they have the drawbacks of being liable to be shut out of doors on cold nights, beatings from the ‘aggravated’ cooks, overpettings of children (how should we like to be squeezed and pulled about in that manner by some great patronizing giants?) and last, not least, horrible merciless tramples of unconscious human feet and unfeeling legs of chairs. Elegance, comfort, and security seem the order of the day on all sides, and you are going to sit down to dinner, or to music, or to take tea, when all of a sudden the cat gives a squall as if she was mashed; and you are not sure that the fact is otherwise. Yet she gets in the way again, as before; and dares all the feet and mahogany in the room. Beautiful present sufficingness of a cat’s imagination! Confined to the snug circle of her own sides, and the two next inches of rug or carpet.

from Essays (c.1870)

 

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Théophile Gautier (1811–72)

To gain the friendship of a cat is not an easy thing. It is a philosophic, well-regulated, tranquil animal, a creature of habit and a lover of order and cleanliness. It does not give its affections indiscriminately. It will consent to be your friend if you are worthy of the honour, but it will not be your slave. With all its affection, it preserves its freedom of judgment, and it will not do anything for you which it considers unreasonable; but once it has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection! It will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness. It will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society, and leaving the company of creatures of its own kind to be with you. In vain the sound of caterwauling reverberates from the house-tops, inviting it to one of those cats’ evening parties where essence of red-herring takes the place of tea. It will not be tempted, but continues to keep its vigil with you. If you put it down it climbs up again quickly, with a sort of crooning noise, which is like a gentle reproach. Sometimes, when seated in front of you, it gazes at you with such soft, melting eyes, such a human and caressing look, that you are almost awed, for it seems impossible that reason can be absent from it.

from ‘The White and Black Dynasties’in La Ménagerie Intime, translated by Lady Chance

 

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Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

Stately, kindly, lordly friend,Condescend

Here to sit by me, and turn

Glorious eyes that smile and burn,

Golden eyes, love’s lustrous meed,

On the golden page I read.

All your wondrous wealth of hair,Dark and fair,

Silken-shaggy, soft and bright

As the clouds and beams of night,

Pays my reverent hand’s caress

Back with friendlier gentleness.

Dogs may fawn on all and some,As they come;

You, a friend of loftier mind,

Answer friends alone in kind;

Just your foot upon my hand

Softly bids it understand.

Morning round this silent sweetGarden-seat

Sheds its wealth of gathering light,

Thrills the gradual clouds with might,

Changes woodland, orchard, heath,

Lawn, and garden there beneath.

Fair and dim they gleamed below:Now they glow

Deep as even your sunbright eyes,

Fair as even the wakening skies.

Can it not or can it be

Now that you give thanks to see?

May not you rejoice as I,Seeing the sky

Change to heaven revealed, and bid

Earth reveal the heaven it hid

All night long from stars and moon,

Now the sun sets all in tune?

What within you wakes with dayWho can say?

All too little may we tell,

Friends who like each other well,

What might haply, if we might,

Bid us read our lives aright.

Wild on woodland ways your siresFlashed like fires;

Fair as flame and fierce and fleet

As with wings on wingless feet

Shone and sprang your mother, free,

Bright and brave as wind or sea.

Free and proud and glad as they,Here today

Rests or roams their radiant child,

Vanquished not, but reconciled,

Free from curb of aught above

Save the lovely curb of love.

Love through dreams of souls divineFain would shine

Round a dawn whose light and song

Then should right our mutual wrong –

Speak, and seal the love-lit law

Sweet Assisi’s seer foresaw.

Dreams were theirs; yet haply may,Dawn a day

When such friends and fellows born,

Seeing our earth as fair at morn,

May for wiser love’s sake see

More of heaven’s deep heart than we.

 

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Graham Tomson (1863–1911)

Half loving-kindliness, and half disdain,

Thou comest to my call, serenely suave,

With humming speech and gracious gesture grave,

In salutation courtly and urbane.

Yet must I humble me thy grace to gain,

For wiles may win thee, but no arts enslave,

And nowhere gladly thou abidest, save

Where naught disturbs the concord of thy reign.

Sphinx of my quiet hearth! who deignst to dwell

Friend of my toil, companion of mine ease,

Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses;

That men forget dost thou remember well,

Beholden still in blinking reveries,

With sombre, sea-green gaze inscrutable.

 

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Amy Lowell (1874–1925)

Cat, Cat,

What are you?

Son, through a thousand generations, of the black leopards

Padding among the sprigs of young bamboo;

Descendant of many removals from the white panthers

Who crouch by night under the loquat-trees?

You crouch under the orange begonias,

And your eyes are green

With the violence of murder,

Or half-closed and stealthy

Like your sheathed claws.

Slowly, slowly,

You rise and stretch

In a glossiness of beautiful curves,

Of muscles fluctuating under black, glazed hair.

Cat,

You are a strange creature.

You sit on your haunches

And yawn,

But when you leap

I can almost hear the whine

Of a released string,

And I look to see its flaccid shaking

In the place whence you sprang.

You carry your tail as a banner,

Slowly it passes my chair,

But when I look for you, you are on the table

Moving easily among the most delicate porcelains.

Your food is a matter of importance

And you are insistent on having

Your wants attended to,

And yet you will eat a bird and its feathers

Apparently without injury.

In the night, I hear you crying,

But if I try to find you

There are only the shadows of rhododendron leaves

Brushing the ground.

When you come in out of the rain,

All wet and with your tail full of burrs,

You fawn upon me in coils and subtleties;

But once you are dry

You leave me with a gesture of inconceivable impudence,

Conveyed by the vanishing quirk of your tail

As you slide through the open door.

You walk as a king scorning his subjects;

You flirt with me as a concubine in robes of silk.

Cat,

I am afraid of your poisonous beauty,

I have seen you torturing a mouse.

Yet when you lie purring in my lap

I forget everything but how soft you are,

And it is only when I feel your claws open upon my hand

That I remember –

Remember a puma lying out on a branch above my head

Years ago.

Shall I choke you, Cat,

Or kiss you?

Really I do not know.

 

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Saki (1870–1916)

Egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb factory, and is prepared for either eventuality. The little domestic quarrel over the luncheon-table had not been fought to a definite finish, and the question was how far Lady Anne was in a mood to renew or forgo hostilities. Her pose in the armchair by the tea-table was rather elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a December afternoon Egbert’s pince-nez did not materially help him to discern the expression of her face.

By way of breaking whatever ice might be floating on the surface he made a remark about a dim religious light. He or Lady Anne was accustomed to make that remark between 4.30 and 6 on winter and late autumn evenings; it was a part of their married life. There was no recognized rejoinder to it, and Lady Anne made none.

Don Tarquinio lay astretch on the Persian rug, basking in the firelight with superb indifference to the possible ill-humour of Lady Anne. His pedigree was as flawlessly Persian as the rug, and his ruff was coming into the glory of its second winter. The page-boy, who had Renaissance tendencies, had christened him Don Tarquinio. Left to themselves, Egbert and Lady Anne would unfailingly have called him Fluff, but they were not obstinate.

Egbert poured himself out some tea. As the silence gave no sign of breaking on Lady Anne’s initiative, he braced himself for another Yermak effort.

‘My remark at lunch had a purely academic application,’ he announced; ‘you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance into it.’

Lady Anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. The bullfinch lazily filled in the interval with an air from Iphigénie en Tauride. Egbert recognized it immediately, because it was the only air the bullfinch whistled, and he had come to them with the reputation for whistling it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred something from The Yeomen of the Guard, which was their favourite opera. In matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. They leaned towards the honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse with harness in obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard full of pale swooning women, and marginally noted ‘Bad News’, suggested to their minds a distinct interpretation of some military catastrophe. They could see what it was meant to convey, and explain it to friends of duller intelligence.

The silence continued. As a rule Lady Anne’s displeasure became articulate and markedly voluble after four minutes of introductory muteness. Egbert seized the milk-jug and poured some of its contents into Don Tarquinio’s saucer; as the saucer was already full to the brim an unsightly overflow was the result. Don Tarquinio looked on with a surprised interest that evanesced into elaborate unconsciousness when he was appealed to by Egbert to come and drink up some of the spilt matter. Don Tarquinio was prepared to play many roles in life, but a vacuum carpet-cleaner was not one of them.

‘Don’t you think we’re being rather foolish?’ said Egbert cheerfully.

If Lady Anne thought so she didn’t say so.

‘I daresay the fault has been partly on my side,’ continued Egbert, with evaporating cheerfulness. ‘After all, I’m only human, you know. You seem to forget that I’m only human.’ He insisted on the point, as if there had been unfounded suggestions that he was built on Satyr lines, with goat continuations where the human left off.

The bullfinch recommenced its air from Iphigénie en Tauride. Egbert began to feel depressed. Lady Anne was not drinking her tea. Perhaps she was feeling unwell. But when Lady Anne felt unwell she was not wont to be reticent on the subject. ‘No one knows what I suffer from indigestion’ was one of her favourite statements; but the lack of knowledge can only have been caused by defective listening; the amount of information available on the subject would have supplied material for a monograph.

Evidently Lady Anne was not feeling unwell.

Egbert began to think he was being unreasonably dealt with; naturally he began to make concessions.

‘I daresay,’ he observed, taking as central a position on the hearth-rug as Don Tarquinio could be persuaded to concede him, ‘I may have been to blame. I am willing, if I can thereby restore things to a happier standpoint, to undertake to lead a better life.’

He wondered vaguely how it would be possible. Temptations came to him, in middle age, tentatively and without insistence, like a neglected butcher-boy who asks for a Christmas box in February for no more hopeful reason than that he didn’t get one in December. He had no more idea of succumbing to them than he had of purchasing the fish-knives and fur boas that ladies are impelled to sacrifice through the medium of advertisement columns during twelve months of the year. Still, there was something impressive in this unasked-for renunciation of possibly latent enormities.

Lady Anne showed no sign of being impressed.

Egbert looked at her nervously through his glasses. To get the worst of an argument with her was no new experience. To get the worst of a monologue was a humiliating novelty.

‘I shall go and dress for dinner,’ he announced in a voice into which he intended some shade of sternness to creep.

At the door a final access of weakness impelled him to make a further appeal.

‘Aren’t we being very silly?’

‘A fool,’ was Don Tarquinio’s mental comment as the door closed on Egbert’s retreat. Then he lifted his velvet forepaws in the air and leapt lightly on to a bookshelf immediately under the bullfinch’s cage. It was the first time he had seemed to notice the bird’s existence, but he was carrying out a long-formed theory of action with the precision of mature deliberation. The bullfinch, who had fancied himself something of a despot, depressed himself of a sudden into a third of his normal displacement; then he fell to a helpless wing-beating and shrill cheeping. He had cost twenty-seven shillings without the cage, but Lady Anne made no sign of interfering. She had been dead for two hours.

from Reginald in Russia (1910)

 

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Champfleury (1821–89)

The love of dress is very marked in this attractive animal; he is proud of the lustre of his coat, and cannot endure that a hair of it shall lie the wrong way. When the cat has eaten, he passes his tongue several times over both sides of his jaws, and his whiskers, in order to clean them thoroughly; he keeps his coat clean with a prickly tongue which fulfils the office of the curry-comb.

from The Cat Past and Present, translated by Mrs Cashel Hoey

 

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Sir Oliver Lodge (1851–1940)

Puddy is the oldest of the cats. Mostly she sits by the fire-side and dreams her dreams. I imagine that she has come to agree with the philosopher that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full of deceit. More and more her mind dwells on the invisible.

 

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Alfred Denis Godley (1856–1925)

Within those halls where student zealHangs every morn on learning’s lips,

Intent to make its daily mealOf Tips,

While drones the conscientious DonOf Latin Prose, of Human

Will, Of Aristotle and of JohnStuart Mill,

We mouth with stern didactic air:We prate of this, we rant of that:

While slumbers on his favourite chairThe Cat!

For what is Mill, and what is Prose,Compared with warmth, and sleep, and food,

– All which collectively composeThe Good?

Although thy unreceptive poseIn presence of eternal Truth

No virtuous example showsTo youth,

Sleep on, O Cat! serenely throughMy hurricanes of hoarded lore,

Nor seek with agitated mewThe door:

Thy calm repose I would not mar,Nor chase thee forth in angry flight

Protesting loud (though some there areWho might),

Because to my reflective mindThou dost from generations gone

Recall a wholly different kindOf Don,

Who took his glass, his social cup,And having quaffed it, mostly sat

Curled (metaphorically) upLike that!

Far from those scenes of daily strifeAnd seldom necessary fuss

Wherein consists the most of lifeFor us,

When Movements moved, they let them move:When Problems raged, they let them rage:

And quite ignored the Spirit ofThe Age.

Of such thou wert the proper mate,O peaceful-minded quadruped!

But liv’st with fellows up to dateInstead –

With men who spend their vital spanIn petty stress and futile storm,

And for a recreation planReform:

Whom pupils ne’er in quiet leave,But throng their rooms in countless hordes:

Who sit from morn to dewy eveOn Boards:

Who skim but erudition’s cream,And con by night and cram by day

Such subjects as the likeliest seemTo pay!

But thou, from cares like these exempt,Our follies dost serenely scan,

Professing thus thy just contemptFor Man:

For well thou knowest, that wished-for goalWhich still to win we vainly pine,

That calm tranquillity of soulIs thine!

 

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Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

In a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks

A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom.

Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir

For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that reel.

Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow

But with the Dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there.

Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and all the while this curious cat

Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold.

Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the tawny throat of her

Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her pointed ears.

Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque!

Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and half animal!

Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and put your head uponmy knee!

And let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the Lynx!

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory and grasp

The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round your heavy velvet paws!

A thousand weary centuries are thine while I have hardly seen

Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn’s gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks,

And you have talked with Basilisks, and you have looked on Hippogriffs.

O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt?

And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony?

And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend her head in mimic awe

To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny from the brine?

And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon on his catafalque?

And did you follow Amenalk, the God of Heliopolis?

And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep?

And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks!

Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories!

Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered with the Holy Child,

And how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneathyour shade.

Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge

You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the laughter of Antinous

And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot andhungry stare

The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth!

Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-formed bull was stalled!

Sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple’s granite plinth

When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew

In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores,

And the great torpid crocodile within the tank shed slimy tears,

And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the Nile,

And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you seizedtheir snake

And crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms.

Who were your lovers? who were they who wrestled for you in the dust?

Which was the vessel of your Lust? What Leman had you, every day?

Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you on the reedy banks?

Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled couch?

Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward you in the mist?

Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with passion as you passedthem by?

And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what horrible Chimera came

With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed new wonders fromyour womb?

Or had you shameful secret quests and did you harry to your home

Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock crystal breasts?

Or did you treading through the froth call to the brown Sidonian

For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or Behemoth?

Or did you when the sun was set climb up the cactus-covered slope

To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was of polished jet?

Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped down the grey Nilotic flats

At twilight and the flickering bats flew round the temple’s triple glyphs

Steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake

And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid your lúpanar

Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted swathèd dead?

Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned Tragelaphos?

Or did you love the god of flies who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed

With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had green beryls for her eyes?

Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more amorous than the dove

Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the Assyrian

Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above hishawk-faced head,

Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch?

Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and lay before your feet

Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured nenuphar?

How subtle-secret is your smile! Did you love none then? Nay, I know

Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with you beside the Nile! [...]

Your lovers are not dead, I know. They will rise up and hear your voice

And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to kiss your mouth! And so,

Set wings upon your argosies! Set horses to your ebon car!

Back to your Nile! Or if you are grown sick of dead divinities

Follow some roving lion’s spoor across the copper-coloured plain,

Reach out and hale him by the mane and bid him be your paramour!

Couch by his side upon the grass and set your white teeth in his throat

And when you hear his dying note lash your long flanks of polished brass

And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber sides are flecked with black,

And ride . . .