What makes a pet? Since cavemen days, man has felt the need for a fellow creature with whom to share his food and shelter, and each time he leaves, to welcome him back. The pet is usually a small, tame animal such as a dog or a cat that may be free or live in captivity with his master.
Argos of ancient Greece was the first dog mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus or Ulysses returns home in disguise after 20 years. Only Argos recognizes him, although he was just a puppy when his master left – now old, ill and flea-ridden. Aware of Ulysses’ presence, he weakly wagged his tail though he no longer had the strength to draw near. Ulysses wiped a tear as he looked away.
In the Odyssey, Homer describes the feelings of a dog and his master in the 8th century, B.C. bringing them close to us through the centuries. Homer wants his readers to understand that there is a bigness in Argos despite his now being old and weak. His poetry has that relation of nearness, largeness, and wonder that an animal can stand for. In the Odyssey is music, a kind of quiet grandeur that may be attributed to this faithful dog of Ulysses. Through poetry and through whatever the pet animal does, enables readers to feel that the world is close and strange, the same yet different.
Poetry in the 18th century mentions a lot. Perhaps there was some kind of awakening wherein the poets discovered that “Poetry ….is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.” (Siegel as mentioned in Bernstein, n.d.) America’s poet and educator, Eli Siegel, is the critic who showed that poetry –because it is fair to the whole world and oneself at the same time; because it is logic and feeling like one thing; because it puts opposites together – answers the questions of every person’s life.” (Bernstein, n.d.). At any rate, the spate of poetry composition about animals in the 18th century could have come about with the poets themselves who decided to try something else and not to cling to the existing stereotyped models.
Who are these poets? What animals did they write about? What do we learn about life from their poems? We start with poetry about birds. We have To A Skylark, The Green Linnet and To the Cuckoo – all by William Wordsworth; To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley and I Heard a Lin-Courting by Robert Bridges.
Wordsworth into a Skylark addresses the bird calling him “ethereal minstrel” and “pilgrim of the sky” (Cartmell and Grayson, eds, 1961). The poet’s words are not without a tinge of envy for the skylark’s capacity to produce music – “ a flood of harmony, God-given and independent f the Spring.” It is learned that courage from the skylark, this “daring warbler”, and peace “in the privacy of his home among the trees.” The bird achieves all these which is more than many human beings aspire for and gain during their lifetimes. The last two lines contain what has been mentioned earlier – the ability of poetry to put opposites together.
“Type of wise, who soar but never roam –
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!”
Shelley’s longer poem, To a Skylark, dwells on the premeditated art (music) and joy of the skylark. The creature is able to do two separate things at the same time:
“The blue sky though wingest, still dost soar,
And soaring ever singest.”
The poet also marvels at the mystery which is the bird itself. On the whole, Shelley’s poem runs along the same lines as that of Wordsworth – praise for the skylark whose music and joy are natural and spontaneous. Shelley regards the bird as superior to a human being, whose existence is marked by some hidden want. The skylark, on the other hand, has ignorance of pain; no shadow of annoyance covers his joy. In man’s care, “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.” The poet pleads with the skylark to teach him “What sweet thoughts are thine?” “Teach me half the gladness/ that thy brain must know.” The rest of the poems mentioned proclaim what birds enjoy in their lifetime that humans lack – joy unrestrained, music sweet as love, and freedom of the air.
In other poetry of the 18th century, Robert Burns extols the admirable qualities of the filed mouse after he has turned her up in her nest with his plow. Burns chides himself for ruining the abode of this “wee beastie” whose only thought was to provide a safe and cozy dwelling place, only to be destroyed by man. He brings to the fore, the mouse’s foresight, patience, and optimism, the courage to go forward despite present unfortunate circumstances. Burns, still speaking to the mouse says:
“Still thou art blest, compared wi’me
The present only touches thee:
But, och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear!
An forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!”
The mouse teaches the reader not to look back to past mistakes and occurrences but to patiently plod on and solve the problems of the present.
Then there is The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes. He aptly calls the sea creature “the ship of pearl”, “the venturous bark” and “child of the sea”, pointing to its beauty, sturdiness, and daring. He describes the animal’s dwelling place also as frail and enchanted. He explains to the reader that as each year elapses, the nautilus leaves its chamber and builds a new and improved one; teaching us humans by example, to leave the “idle past” in order to build a better life. In his mind, the past encourages him to:
“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave the low-vaulted past!”
We also have William Cowper who writes about his pet rabbit named Tiney.
“Though duty from my hand he took
His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look,
And when he could, would bite.”
“The way he stops and continues is beautiful,” says Ellen Reiss. “Every animal has stopping and continuing differently. The way a cat has continuity is different from a dog.” (Reiss, as mentioned in Bernstein, n.d.)She points out that if you see a greyhound in motion, there seems to be a great continuity – different from a terrier. Cowper writes in another stanza:
“His frisking was at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear;
But most before approaching show’rs,
Or when a storm drew near.”
Commented Ms. Reiss: “His frisking, as something immediate. And then the sound of evening hours is so different from the sound of frisking. It’s hard to think of any two sound more different. You feel the immediacy of a creature and the strangeness of the world. Can every person stand for the world as immediate and strange? Here again, we have poetry combining opposites.
To conclude, here is a poem by Eli Siegel. A lover of poetry is amazed by the way it puts together the cozy and the large, immediacy and the eternal:
“Any Star and Shakey
If there is any star
To be named after a pussycat,
I nominate Shakey,
Now on my lap.
For it is good to think of a star
As close as one’s lap.
It makes distance more friendly,
More what it is.
And it makes pussycats (the thought does)
More functional, more there,
In an endless world,
Swarming around us.”
All creatures – furry, feathered, or even slimy, are a means of knowing oneself, poetry, the “endless world swarming around us” and to be a kinder person toward others and toward animals in particular.
References
Cartmell, V.H. and Grayson, G. (eds.) (1961) Selections from The Golden Argosy, Copyright by Oscar Williams.
Reiss, E. as mentioned in Bernstein, A. (n.d.) People, Pets and Poetry. 2007. Web.