To a Cat

By Algernon Charles Swinburne

Stately, kindly, lordly friend,

Condescend

Here to sit by me, and turn

Glorious eyes that smile and burn,

Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,

On the golden page I read.

All your wondrous wealth of hair,

Dark and fair,

Silken-shaggy, soft and bright

As the clouds and beams of night,

Pays my reverent hand's caress

Back with friendlier gentleness.

Dogs may fawn on all and some

As they come;

You, a friend of loftier mind,

Answer friends alone in kind.

Just your foot upon my hand

Softly bids it understand.

Morning round this silent sweet

Garden-seat

Sheds its wealth of gathering light,

Thrills the gradual clouds with might,

Changes woodland, orchard, heath,

Lawn, and garden there beneath.

Fair and dim they gleamed below:

Now they glow

Deep as even your sunbright eyes,

Fair as even the wakening skies.

Can it not or can it be

Now that you give thanks to see?

May not you rejoice as I,

Seeing the sky

Change to heaven revealed, and bid

Earth reveal the heaven it hid

All night long from stars and moon,

Now the sun sets all in tune?

What within you wakes with day

Who can say?

All too little may we tell,

Friends who like each other well,

What might haply, if we might,

Bid us read our lives aright.

Wild on woodland ways your sires

Flashed like fires:

Fair as flame and fierce and fleet

As with wings on wingless feet

Shone and sprang your mother, free,

Bright and brave as wind or sea.

Free and proud and glad as they,

Here to-day

Rests or roams their radiant child,

Vanquished not, but reconciled,

Free from curb of aught above

Save the lovely curb of love.

Love through dreams of souls divine

Fain would shine

Round a dawn whose light and song

Then should right our mutual wrong —

Speak, and seal the love-lit law

Sweet Assisi's seer foresaw.

Dreams were theirs; yet haply may

Dawn a day

When such friends and fellows born,

Seeing our earth as fair at morn,

May for wiser love's sake see

More of heaven's deep heart than we.

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

-- David Whyte
from Fire in the Earth
©1992 Many Rivers Press