MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT

Poetry
 I Sc 2nd Year  Lession -7

 MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT

T.S.Eliot

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT (1888-1965) was born in St.Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. but eventually settled  in England. A classicist in literature, an Anglo-catholicin religion, and a royalist in politics,he rose to become one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was also a distinguished critic and a dramatist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. His best known poems are The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets. As a poet and spokesman for his age he truly represents the intellectual, social and philosophical moods of the twentieth century. The present poem 'Macavity: The Mystery Cat' is from his collection called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which was made into a very successful music on stage by the great composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber. It is a light poem in the mock heroic vein. It does not need any solemn or detailed analysis; its charm comes from its neat rhymed and galloping rhythm as well as the comic effort of a monster-criminal who is in fact a cat.

  MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw 

for he's  the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He's the bafflement of Scotland yard, the Flying Squad's despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime- Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a Mystery, there's no one like Macavity,

He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.