What aspect of the poem ' Ode to the Death of a Favourite Cat' make it humorous?
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Answer:
Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes’
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51 years ago
A reading of a classic satirical poem
‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes’ is, along with his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ and his ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’, the most famous poem by Thomas Gray (1716-71). The poem was occasioned by a real-life event involving the cat belonging to Gray’s friend, Horace Walpole (author of the first Gothic novel among other things). Gray’s poem pokes fun at human sentimentality by describing the death of the cat in deliberately exaggerated terms, likening the cat’s plight to the tragic fall of an epic hero. Here’s a reminder of the poem before we proceed to an analysis of its features.
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.
Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream;
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.
The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?
Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch’d, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.
Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A Favourite has no friend!
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Answer:
the poem make it humourous is
she stretched everytime and then she also bent without knowing there are gulf in between
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