Pangur Ban and I at work,
Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:
His whole instinct is to hunt,
Mine to free the meaning pent.
More than loud acclaim, I love
Books, silence, thought, my alcove.
Happy for me, Pangur Ban
Child-plays round some mouse's den.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Soft purr, soft pad
Adela muses on animals and/in literature, and offers the lovely ninth-century Irish poem "Pangur Ban" in a translation by Seamus Heaney:
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Ah, I prefer Auden's rendering:
ReplyDeletePangur, white Pangur, How happy we are
Alone together, scholar and cat
Each has his own work to do daily;
For you it is hunting, for me study.
Your shining eye watches the wall;
My feeble eye is fixed on a book.
You rejoice, when your claws entrap a mouse;
I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem.
Pleased with his own art, neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever without tedium and envy.
Nice setting by Samuel Barber too, in case you haven't heard it ...