Thomas Hardy earned his celebrity as a novelist and playwright — but thought of himself first and foremost as a poet — his poems are a challenge to me — they seem oddly balanced between the 19th and 20th Century but are certainly an authentic voice for exactly that place in our cultural evolution…? This poem has always touched me for its sensitive awareness of how cats weave their lives into ours, for what it reveals about the poet’s attentive awareness of his cat’s independent companionship… And for the depth of Hardy’s affection — and his despondence — disclosed so clearly…
(And perhaps I need not add — but will — that “dumb” is a play against our anthropocentric presumption that cats (or other creatures) are either inexpressive or unintelligent…)
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“Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall –
Foot suspended in its fall –
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.
“Never another pet for me!
Let your place all vacant be;
Better blankness day by day
Than companion torn away.
Better bid his memory fade,
Better blot each mark he made,
Selfishly escape distress
By contrived forgetfulness,
Than preserve his prints to make
Every morn and eve an ache.
“From the chair whereon he sat
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake his little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away his talons’ mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.
“Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should–by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance –
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.
“As a prisoner, flight debarred,
Exercising in a yard,
Still retain I, troubled, shaken,
Mean estate, by him forsaken;
And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look,
By his faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of him.
“Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.”
October 2, 1904.
Did something happen to Ray or Monk?
No, didn’t mean to be alarmist! — they’re both well and healthy — I have always loved Thomas Hardy and particularly like his love of cats which shines from this poem — and the genle irony of his line: “Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways” — his recognition of how strange we primates must seem to animals of such strength and grace…!
Glad to hear it! Hardy’s words are certainly an effective eulogy. I’m happy to hear that they weren’t a proxy for your own loss as this would be a loss for the rest of the readers of Ray’s blog as well.