Page 12 - Poetry-Animals

Your spirit shines out in your donkey strains!
Though plumed like an angel, the ass remains.”

So you see, love, that goodness is better than grace.
For the proverb fails in the peacock’s case,
Which says that fine feathers make fine birds, too;
This other old adage is far more true,—
They only are handsome that handsomely do.

—(Atlantic Monthly, 1865)

Home from the Show

One morning, I was hardly drest,
They snatched me from my happy home,
And squeezed me in a wooden chest,
As dark as any Cat-a-comb.

I spat—I swore—I struggled hard;
My mistress gave the lid a kiss,
And wrote, with tears, upon the card,
“The Cat Show—the Metropolis.”

They put us in a lofty place,
It smelt of sawdust, gas, and fog:
And there a clerk, with sallow face,
Soon booked me in a Cat-a-logue.

And many were the sounds of rage,
The bristling tails, and gleaming eyes;
For cats by thousands, cage on cage,
Were there competing for a prize.

~ 10 ~