A poet had a cat.
There is nothing odd in that—
(I _might_ make a little pun about the _Mews_!)
But what is really more
Remarkable, she wore
A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.
And I doubt me greatly whether
E’er you heard the like of that:
Pointed shoes of patent-leather
On a cat!
His time he used to pass
Writing sonnets, on the grass—
(I _might_ say something good on _pen_ and _sward_!)
While the cat sat near at hand,
Trying hard to understand
The poems he occasionally roared.
(I myself possess a feline,
But when poetry I roar
He is sure to make a bee-line
For the door.)
The poet, cent by cent,
All his patrimony spent—
(I _might_ tell how he went from _verse_ to _worse_!)
Till the cat was sure she could,
By advising, do him good.
So addressed him in a manner that was terse:
“We are bound toward the scuppers,
And the time has come to act,
Or we’ll both be on our uppers
For a fact!”
On her boot she fixed her eye,
But the boot made no reply—
(I _might_ say: “Couldn’t speak to save its _sole_!”)
And the foolish bard, instead
Of responding, only read
A verse that wasn’t bad upon the whole.
And it pleased the cat so greatly,
Though she knew not what it meant,
That I’ll quote approximately
How it went:—
“If I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree”—
(I _might_ put in: “I think I’d just as _leaf_!”)
“Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough”—
Well, he’d plagiarized it bodily, in brief!
But that cat of simple breeding
Couldn’t read the lines between,
So she took it to a leading
Magazine.
She was jarred and very sore
When they showed her to the door.
(I _might_ hit off the _door_ that was a _jar_!)
To the spot she swift returned
Where the poet sighed and yearned,
And she told him that he’d gone a little far.
“Your performance with this rhyme has
Made me absolutely sick,”
She remarked. “I think the time has
Come to kick!”
I could fill up half the page
With descriptions of her rage—
(I _might_ say that she went a bit _too fur_)!
When he smiled and murmured: “Shoo!”
“There is one thing I can do!”
She answered with a wrathful kind of purr.
“You may shoo me, an’ it suit you,
But I feel my conscience bid
Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!”
(Which she did.)
_The Moral_ of the plot
(Though I say it, as should not!)
Is: An editor is difficult to suit.
But again there’re other times
When the man who fashions rhymes
Is a rascal, and a bully one to boot!
_H. H. Knibbs_
Harry Herbert Knibbs was born at Niagara Falls, October 24, 1874.
After a desultory schooling, he attended Harvard for three years
when he was thirty-four. “Somebody said I took honors in English,”
says Knibbs, “but I never saw them.” He wrote his first book, _Lost
Farm Camp_, a novel, as a class exercise.
Half a dozen volumes followed, _Overland Red_ (1914) and _Tang of
Life_ (1917) being the most popular. In 1911, Knibbs settled in Los
Angeles, California, where he has lived ever since.
In _Riders of the Stars_ (1916) and _Songs of the Trail_ (1920),
Knibbs carries on the tradition of Bret Harte and the Pike County
Ballads. High-hearted verse this is, with more than an occasional
flash of poetry. To the typical Western breeziness, Knibbs adds a
wider whimsicality, a rough-shod but nimble imagination.