thee still,
     As still beyond thy curving side
     Its jetty tip is seen to glide;
     Till from thy centre starting far,
     Thou sidelong veer’st with rump in air
     Erected stiff, and gait awry,
     Like madam in her tantrums high;
     Though ne’er a madam of them all,
     Whose silken kirtle sweeps the hall,
     More varied trick and whim displays
     To catch the admiring stranger’s gaze. 
     Doth power in measured verses dwell,
     All thy vagaries wild to tell? 
     Ah, no! the start, the jet, the bound,
     The giddy scamper round and round,
     With leap and toss and high curvet,
     And many a whirling somerset,
     (Permitted by the modern muse
     Expression technical to use)—­These
     mock the deftest rhymester’s skill,
     But poor in art, though rich in will.

     The featest tumbler, stage bedight,
     To thee is but a clumsy wight,
     Who every limb and sinew strains
     To do what costs thee little pains;
     For which, I trow, the gaping crowd
     Requite him oft with plaudits loud.

     But, stopped the while thy wanton play,
     Applauses too thy pains repay: 
     For then, beneath some urchin’s hand
     With modest pride thou takest thy stand,
     While many a stroke of kindness glides
     Along thy back and tabby sides. 
     Dilated swells thy glossy fur,
     And loudly croons thy busy purr,
     As, timing well the equal sound,
     Thy clutching feet bepat the ground,
     And all their harmless claws disclose
     Like prickles of an early rose,
     While softly from thy whiskered cheek
     Thy half-closed eyes peer, mild and meek.

     But not alone by cottage fire
     Do rustics rude thy feats admire. 
     The learned sage, whose thoughts explore
     The widest range of human lore,
     Or with unfettered fancy fly
     Through airy heights of poesy,
     Pausing smiles with altered air
     To see thee climb his elbow-chair,
     Or, struggling on the mat below,
     Hold warfare with his slippered toe. 
     The widowed dame or lonely maid,
     Who, in the still but cheerless shade
     Of home unsocial, spends her age,
     And rarely turns a lettered page,
     Upon her hearth for thee lets fall
     The rounded cork or paper ball,
     Nor chides thee on thy wicked watch,
     The ends of raveled skein to catch,
     But lets thee have thy wayward will,
     Perplexing oft her better skill.

     E’en he whose mind, of gloomy bent,
     In lonely tower or prison pent,
     Reviews the coil of former days,
     And loathes the world and all its ways,
     What time the lamp’s unsteady gleam
     Hath roused him from his moody dream,
     Feels, as thou gambol’st round his seat,
     His heart of pride less fiercely beat,
     And smiles, a link in thee to find
     That joins it still to living kind.