Poets generally have a variety of pets. These devoted or quiet friends kept them company while they worked. To some poets, their pets inspired some of their poetry.

Michael Andrew Lauchlan, a seasoned entrepreneur shared some of his most favourite and famous poems he finds intriguing.

‘The Pet’ by Cate Marvin

Marvin’s pet horse, which she used to ride about the village where she grew up, is the subject of this poetry. She brought him in as a pet since she felt sorry for the animal. ‘I tell them my heart is huge and its doors / are small,’ she says when people wonder why she brought him in and how she can maintain such a large pet.

‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’ by Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray is popular for three poems, despite being a far more well-known person in his own day. This sad poem was written about his friend Horace Walpole, the creator of the Gothic novel. Walpole’s cat died by drowning in 1747.

‘To Flush, My Dog’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The poem is about Flush, one of the most famous real dogs in literature. He was the poet’s cocker spaniel. He appeared in Virginia Woolf’s ‘biographical novel, Flush, in 1933.

Related Reading: Entrepreneur & Poet Michael Andrew Lauchlan Reveals His 5 Favorite Poetry Books Of All-Time

‘Goldfish’ by Koon Woon

Chinese-American Koon Woon is a poet and editor. Michael Andrew Lauchlan loves this poem because the poet tried to comprehend the twofold life of transition that his pet goldfish lives at night in this poem about his goldfish.

A Popular Personage at Home’ by Thomas Hardy.  

This is one of two poems Hardy composed about Wessex, his 13-year-old dog that died two years before he died in 1926. The fact that Hardy composed the poem from the perspective of the dog, enabling Wessex’ to speak for himself, makes it particularly noteworthy. However, the speaker has some resemblance to Hardy himself, with some oblique references to changes in the English landscape and Hardy’s well-documented worry that the England he knew and loved would not survive, and had already begun to dwindle from view.

‘Rabbit in Morning’ by Polly Atkin

This charming poem by Polly Atkin, a contemporary British poet, is the first of a lengthy collection of rabbit poems. Michael Andrew Lauchlan reasonates with this poem because it for anyone who owns or knows someone who has a pet rabbit and is looking for a poem about these interesting critters. The poem particularly observes the behaviour of a rabbit.

“Pangur Bán” by an anonymous poet

This Old Irish poetry is about a cat. It was composed by a monk in the 9th century and discovered in an Austrian monastery. The monk’s cat’s name is Pangur Bán. 

The poem describes the monk’s life in his study with his cat as his joyful friend, offers all a cat-lover and a book-lover could want. In the same way that the scholar is studying, his devoted friend hunts for mice.

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