The fireside sphinx . y beautiful Per-sian ; and who that has read the pathetic lamentfor Poor Matthias, can forget the description ofher compelling and sinister loveliness . Thou hast seen Atossa sageSit for hours beside thy cage ;Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,Flutter, chirp, — she never stirred !What were now these toys to her ?Down she sank amid her fur;Eyed thee with a soul resignd,And thou deemedst cats were kind!— Cruel, but composed and bland,Dumb, inscrutable, and grand;So Tiberius might have sat,Had Tiberius been a cat. And so Montaigne might have written, had Mon-taigne been
The fireside sphinx . y beautiful Per-sian ; and who that has read the pathetic lamentfor Poor Matthias, can forget the description ofher compelling and sinister loveliness . Thou hast seen Atossa sageSit for hours beside thy cage ;Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,Flutter, chirp, — she never stirred !What were now these toys to her ?Down she sank amid her fur;Eyed thee with a soul resignd,And thou deemedst cats were kind!— Cruel, but composed and bland,Dumb, inscrutable, and grand;So Tiberius might have sat,Had Tiberius been a cat. And so Montaigne might have written, had Mon-taigne been a poet. The attitude of the two mentowards the animals they loved, but could not hopeto understand, —an unmoral, unjudicial attitude, asremote from vindication as from denunciation, shows 178 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX them to have been serene students of natural laws. Thus freely speaketh Montaigne concerning cats,observes Isaac Walton with gravity ; and thus freelyspeaketh Matthew Arnold. Both knew whereofthey
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectcats, bookyear1901
