Classic Poem

The night is done — and overdone — and burnt a bit at that;
It is the time when She puts out the Milk Jug and Kat;
It is the time when bad men rise, prepared to do a crime —
And this, in many a happy home, is Curtain Lecture time.

An hour goes past — or we go past — it doesn't matter which;
I know the time — the Wife's dear voice begins to lose its pitch;
I burrow deeper, edgeways, as one in slumber deep;
Her elbow digs my side: " Now, don't pretend to be asleep! "

I doze. She turns away, thank God. I wake up on the rack;
She is at rest, her icy feet are planted in my back!
It's no use wriggling off — they'll warm, and that will soon be right!
I settle down to listen to the Voices of the Night.

Another drowsy interlude, and I'm awake, and wide...
I thought she had begun again, but those were sounds outside;
Strange voices as in anguish, but I know the voice of him —
I know it's Dooly (Thomas cat) engaged in combat grim.

I slip out, careful as a cat, and nip the blind aside,
And look into the broad moonlight, and there I note with pride,
Upon the slippery wash-house roof, unbarracked for, alone,
Beset by three great mangy Toms, our Dooly holds his own!

He was a Hay-and-Cornstore cat before he came to me
(Or I stole him from his loneliness, and greed and cruelty);
They starved him so's he'd catch the mice in Hay-and-Cornstore days,
And when he'd nothing else to eat he'd whet his teeth on maize.

To save a pint or two of grain — 'twould make a stone cat swear —
They'd shut him up from Saturday till Monday morning there.
On holidays his claws he sharped on Hay-and-Cornstore bags,
Until each bunch of schnapper-hooks could tear a cat to rags.

The last strange Tom goes backward from the wash-house roof with growls,
And strikes a loosened roost-end, whence complaint of wakened fowls;
The dogs cease to expostulate, and peace is with the night,
Where Mrs Dooly from a ledge sat looking on the fight.

And I retire to rest once more, ere day be well begun;
The Council Clock is striking four, which means it's just on one....
I thought I heard the wheels of time go hastening to decay —
'Tis but two men connected with a lantern and a dray.

They take me back to boyhood scenes I ne'er may see again —
The moonlight and the horse and dray and those nocturnal men;
The wash-dirt stealers that we caught — but these be just and right —
The honest, jovial citizens: the Pilgrims of the Night!