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| | A late London paper mentions that the celebrated Manheim Telescope, the master-piece of the famous Spaiger, a Hungarian optician, was recently destroyed in a singular manner. A servant of the Observatory having taken out the glasses to clean them, put them in again, without observing that a cat had crept into the tube. At night, the animal being alarmed at the strong powers of the Lunar rays, endeavored to escape; but the effort threw down the instrument, which, falling to the ground from the top of a tower, was broken to pieces. The writer, presuming that the cat was killed by the fall, imagines the daughter of the astronomer as breaking forth in the following Lament. |
WHAT whisker’d ghost, at this mild moonlight hour, | |
| Invites my steps, and points to yonder tower? | |
| ’Tis Puss, my darling Puss; all bleeding! pale! | |
| Gash’d are her ears, and scotch’d her lengthy tail. | |
| Oh, tell thy tale, and I will lend an ear— | 5 |
| Then sweep to my revenge, Grimalkin, dear. | |
| Oh say, did boys, or other cruel hounds, | |
| Conspire thy death, and give those ghastly wounds? | |
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| Or, tell me Puss, ’tis what I dread the most, | |
| Did some Kilkenny cat make thee a ghost? | 10 |
| Canst thou not speak? Ah then I ’ll seek the cause; | |
| What see I here? the bloody prints of paws; | |
| And oh, chaste stars! what broken limbs appear, | |
| Here lie thy legs; the Telescope’s lie here. | |
| The Telescope o’erturn’d;—too plain I see | 15 |
| The cause, the cause of thy cat-astrophe. | |
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| Was it for this, my sire on topmost tower, | |
| Gazed at the stars till midnight’s dewy hour, | |
| Outwatch’d the Bear, and saw Orion rise, | |
| While Hesper lent her light to other skies? | 20 |
| Was it for this, he gave such strict command, | |
| To clean the glasses with a careful hand, | |
| And then to search the tube with nicest care, | |
| To see nor cat, nor kit, were nestling there; | |
| Lest, like old Sidrophel, star-gazing wight, | 25 |
| Who wisely made a comet of a kite, | |
| My cat, perhaps, ’twixt Mercury and Mars, | |
| Had help’d to swell the cat-alogue of stars. | |
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| O! say what led thee to that giddy height, | |
| Thou Queen of cats! that witching time of night; | 30 |
| Was it cat-optrics fired thy feline heart, | |
| And didst thou dare to act the sage’s part, | |
| And peeping at the moon, while stretch’d at ease, | |
| Discover with delight ’twas all green cheese? | |
| Or didst thou wish to take a near survey, | 35 |
| Of that delicious stream, the milky-way, | |
| And while the dog-star in the welkin raves, | |
| To take a leap, and lap its cream-clad waves? | |
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| Ah me! what terrors through thy frame were spread, | |
| When Luna’s rays refracted on thy head, | 40 |
| And fill’d thy gooseberry eyes with beams so thick, | |
| No wonder thou becam’st a lunatic; | |
| Lost all reflection; scarce retain’d a hope, | |
| Immured in a reflecting telescope. | |
| The concave mirror first thy fury bore, | 45 |
| The convex lens but vexed thee the more: | |
| Then all thy rage was to a focus brought; | |
| To tilt the tube was now thy only thought; | |
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| Flounce—bounce:—it tumbles from the turret wall, | |
| Breaking itself, but breaking not thy fall! | 50 |
| Oh direful fall!—But why indulge this wo? | |
| Can cat-aracts of tears avail thee now? | |
| No; thou art bound to Hecate’s wizzard shore, | |
| Where Whittington’s famed cat has gone before; | |
| And to appease thy ghost my task shall be, | 55 |
| To consecrate a cat-acomb to thee. | |
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| Embalm’d, dear shade, with true Egyptian care, | |
| Across the Atlantic wave thy corpse I ’ll bear, | |
| And where old Catskill props the western sky, | |
| The fur-clad relics of my cat shall lie. | 60 |
| There shall thy favorite herbs and plants be found, | |
| The cat-mint there shall shed its sweets around; | |
| The savory mushroom from the sod shall start, | |
| And to the breeze its catsup sweets impart. | |
| While the tall cat-tail, on the reedy shore, | 65 |
| Shall hang his head, and thy sad fate deplore. | |
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| One warbler of the grove will ne’er forget | |
| To pay to thee his grateful, tuneful debt; | |
| The cat-bird, perch’d on the catalpa tree, | |
| Shall squall that note he learnt, poor puss, from thee, | 70 |
| While from the mount, the valley, and the plain, | |
| The weeping pole-cat shall repeat the strain. | |
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