Dulcie's selection

These from Dulcie -

A valediction; forbidding mourning - John Donne (1611)

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their soulds, to go,
whilst some of their sad friends do say,
the breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Move of th'earth brings harms and fears
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love, so much refined,
That our selves know what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy sould the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th'other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th'other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

Macavity - the Mystery Cat - T S Eliot

Macavity's a Mystery Cat; he's called the Hidd Paw -
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair
For when they read the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no-one like Macavity
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare
And when you read the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you make look up in the air,
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a giner cat, he's very tall and thin
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed
His coat is dustry from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake,
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no-one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square,
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable (they say he cheats at cards)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office finds a treaty's gone astray
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall, or on the stair,
But it's useless to invetigate - Macavity's not there!

And when the loss has been dislosed, the Secret Service say -
"It must have been Macavity" - but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no-one like Macavity,
There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity;
He always has an alibi, or one or two to spare,
And whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
and they say that all the cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!