The Cat and the Moon

This setting of a Yeats poem is light, playful, and delightful. It describes the relationship between The Cat (called Minnaloushe) and the Moon. This distant yet powerful attraction might parallel Yeats’s real-life affection for Maud Gonne, the owner of an actual cat named Minnaloushe.

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
― William Butler Yeats

The Cat and the Moon

William Butler Yeats was interested in mysticism, philosophy, astrology, and occultism.