THE gardener's cat's called Mignonette, She hates the cold, she hates the wet, She sits among the hothouse flowers And sleeps for hours and hours and hours. She dreams she is a tiger fierce With great majestic claws that pierce, She sits by the hot-water pipes And dreams about a coat of stripes; And in her slumbers she will go And stalk the sullen buffalo, And when he roars across the brake She does not wink, she does not wake. It must be perfectly immense To dream with such magnificence, And pass the most inclement day In this indeed stupendous way. She dreams of India's sunny clime, And only wakes at dinner-time, And even then she does not stir But waits till milk is brought to her. How nice to be the gardener's cat, She troubles not for mouse or rat, But, when it's coming down in streams, She sits among the flowers and dreams. The gardener's cat would be the thing, Her dreams are so encouraging; She dreams that she's a tiger, yet She's just a cat called Mignonette! The moral's this, my little man— Sleep 'neath life's hailstones when you can, And if you're humble in estate, Dreams splendidly, at any rate! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO ATLANTA UNIVERSITY - ITS FOUNDERS AND TEACHERS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON CHAMBER MUSIC: 9 by JAMES JOYCE THE PHANTOM-LOVER [OR, WOOER] by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES A PRAISE OF HIS LOVE by HENRY HOWARD DYING SPEECH OF AN OLD PHILOSOPHER by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR THE BOATMAN by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI |