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By Edward Lear. I. The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea. In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy!
Edward Lear. 1812 –. 1888. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea. In a beautiful pea-green boat: They took some honey, and plenty of money. Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are!
The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
- Summary of The Owl and The Pussy-Cat
- Structure of The Poem
- Poetic Techniques
- Analysis of The Owl and The Pussy-Cat
This nonsense poem starts with the boat journey of the two main characters named in the title. They profess their love to one another and decide to get married. They need to find a ring and their search takes them to a pig. That pig sells them its nose ring for one shilling and they get married. After that, there is much celebrating and the poem en...
‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ by Edward Lear is a three-stanza poem that’s divided into sets of eleven lines. These lines follow a rhyme scheme of ABCBDEDEEEE, shifting slightly in the second and third stanzas. Lear also makes use of half-rhyme and internal rhyme. Half rhyme, also known as slant or partial rhyme,is seen through the repetition of asso...
Lear makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’. These include alliteration, symbolism, metaphor, and enjambment. The first, alliteration, occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same letter.Alliteration has the ability to increase the musicality of lines. This is so...
Stanza One
In the first stanza of ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ the speaker describes the actions and adventures of an owl and a pussy-cat. The two travel out to sea in a “beautiful pea-green boat,” a symbolfor their happiness together. They took everything they needed with them, “honey, and plenty of money”. The internal rhyme in these lines is quite effective. It is employed numerous times throughout the text. The personification of these animals is not addressed, instead, it is taken as natural that th...
Stanza Two
In the second stanza of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, the cat responds just as complimentarily to the owl. The cat calls the owl an “elegant fowl” and declares that they should stop wasting time and be married. Next, there is the question of the ring and where they’re going to get one. In their search, they sailed for an extended period of time. Finally, they got to an even more fantastical world in which there were “Bong-Tree[s]” and a pig that had a ring at the end of his nose. The phrase “nos...
Stanza Three
In the last lines of ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ the owl asks the pig to sell the couple the ring in its nose for “one shilling”. The pig immediately agrees and the couple got married. They celebrated afterward with a big meal, each getting something they wanted. They used a “runcible spoon”. Today, the word “runcible” is used to refer to a spork but when it was coined by Lear he did not give it a specific definition and often used the adjective in different ways. In the last lines, Lear retu...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
"The Owl and the Pussy-cat" is a nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1870 in the American magazine Our Young Folks and again the following year in Lear's own book Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets.
- Jan Brett, Edward Lear
- 1867
Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" is a classic children's poem, originally published in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871). Its heroes, an owl and a cat, fall madly in love and sail off to be married together. With the help of a friendly pig and turkey, they enjoy a delightful wedding, followed by dinner and a dance in ...
The Owl and the Pussy-cat, nonsense poem by Edward Lear, published in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871). One of the best known and most frequently anthologized of Lear’s poems, it was written and illustrated for a young daughter of the English man of letters John Addington.
