Classic Poem

I watch you basking sleepy in the light,
Majestic dreamer, humorously stern.
Your little scratch-scarred nose betrays you quite,
Yet how I long to know your thoughts, to learn
What magic dreams beget themselves and burn
Throughout your subtle nerves; for once I saw
A cat's form graven on an antique urn,
And round their god Egyptians knelt in awe.
Was once thy hiss a blight, was once thy purr a law?
Perhaps through sentient chains of linkèd ages
Your soul has fled; yet like a haunting dream
Can recollect the prayers of swarthy sages,
Can hear the wash of Nilus' mystic stream!
It seems I see you basking in the gleam
Of desert dawns. Majestical you gaze
Into the eye of Ra, and dream a dream.
Vast multitudes wait breathless in amaze
For your oraculous purr to set their hearts ablaze!

Perhaps you think “How stupid grows the world,”
And pine for godhood, till you come to be
A broken spirit, like a war flag furled,
Or drought-drained river sighing for the sea!
What potent utterance do you waste on me
When I am kind and stroke your glossy fur?
What do you gaze on that I cannot see?
Perhaps if men could know the things that were,
Their petted faiths should quake and tremble at your purr!