by Elizabeth Bishop

Minnow, go to sleep and dream,
Close your great big eyes;
Round your bed Events prepare
The pleasantest surprise.
Darling Minnow, drop that frown,
Just cooperate,
Not a kitten shall be drowned
In the Marxist State.
Joy and Love will both be yours,
Minnow, don't be glum.
Happy days are coming soon--
Sleep, and let them come...

The Cat And The Moon

by William Butler Yeats

The cat went here and there

And the moon spun round like a top,

And the nearest kin of the moon,

The creeping cat, looked up.

Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,

For, wander and wail as he would,

The pure cold light in the sky

Troubled his animal blood.

Minnaloushe runs in the grass

Lifting his delicate feet.

Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?

When two close kindred meet.

What better than call a dance?

Maybe the moon may learn,

Tired of that courtly fashion,

A new dance turn.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

From moonlit place to place,

The sacred moon overhead

Has taken a new phase.

Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils

Will pass from change to change,

And that from round to crescent,

From crescent to round they range?

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

Alone, important and wise,

And lifts to the changing moon

His changing eyes.

To a Cat

by John Keats

Cat! who has pass'd thy grand climacteric,

How many mice and rats hast in thy days

Destroy'd? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze

With those bright languid segments green, and

prick

Those velvet ears - but prythee do not stick

Thy latent talons in me - and tell me all thy frays,

Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick;

Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists, -

For all the wheezy asthma - and for all

Thy tail's tip is nick'd off - and though the fists

Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,

Still is thy fur as when the lists

In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.