Shelley's earliest surviving poem

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Portrait of Shelley as a boy

Shelley's early gothic novel

Credit: The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library

Object details

1803-5

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Related information

Biography: P. B. Shelley

Family tree

Description

This is probably Shelley’s earliest surviving poem. It has survived in this transcription by his sister Elizabeth, who also made the watercolour sketch of the cat. Elizabeth was Shelley’s closest companion at Field Place, and the poem seems to refer to an incident they had shared. After Elizabeth’s death it passed to her younger sister Hellen, who in 1858 described it as ‘a child’s effusion about a cat, which evidently had a story, but it must have been before I can remember.’

The manuscript bears the watermark ‘Charles Wilmott | 1809’. An inscription in a different hand underneath Elizabeth’s transcription reads: ‘Percy Bysshe Shelley written | at 10 years of age to his Sister at School.’ The childlike simplicity of the verse may, however, be deliberate burlesque, and the composition of the poem has been dated as late as 1809-early 1811.

Transcript

A Cat in Distress

Nothing more or less,

Good folks I must faithfully tell ye,

As I am a sinner

It wants for some dinner

To stuff out its own little belly

2––

You migh’n.^t easily guess

All the modes of distress

Which torture the tenants of earth

And the various evils

Which like many devils

Attend the poor dogs from their birth

3––

Some a living require

And others desire

An old fellow out of the way,

And which is the best

I leave to be guessed

For I cannot pretend to say

4––

One wants society

Tother variety

Others a tranquil life;

Some want food

Other as good

Only require a wife.

But this poor little Cat

Only wanted a rat

To stuff out its own little maw

And twere as good

Had some people such food

To make them hold their jaw

Owners

Elizabeth Shelley; Hellen Shelley; Mrs. Titchurch; Mrs. J.C. Worthington

References

Shelley and His Circle, iv, 813-9; Nora Crook, ‘Shelley’s Earliest Poem?’, Notes and Queries, n.s. 34 (December 1987), pp. 486-90; Reiman and Fraistat (ed.), Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley_, i, pp. 135-6, 296-301

See references in full

Shelley's Ghost