Read The Best of Archy and Mehitabel for Free Online Page B

against me
    as a poet
    more beautiful creatures could
    write verse worse than mine
    and get up and recite it
    with a triumphant air
    and get away with it
    but my sublimest ideas
    were thought to be a total
    loss when people saw
    where they came from
    i think it would have been
    only justice
    if i had been sent to inhabit
    a butterfly
    but there is very little
    justice in the universe
    what is the use
    of being the universe
    if you have to be just
    interrogation point
    and i suppose the universe
    has so much really important
    business on hand
    that it finds it impossible
    to look after the details
    it is rushed
    perhaps it has private
    knowledge to the effect
    that eternity is brief
    after all
    and it wants to get the big
    jobs finished in a hurry
    i find it possible to forgive
    the universe
    i meet it in a give and take spirit
    although i do wish
    that it would consult me at times
    please forgive
    the profundity of these
    meditations
    whenever i have nothing
    particular to say
    i find myself always
    always plunging into cosmic
    philosophy
    or something
    archy

mehitabel meets an affinity
    paris france
    mehitabel the cat
    has been passing her
    time in the dubious
    company of
    a ragged eared tom cat
    with one mean
    eye and the other
    eye missing whom
    she calls francy
    he has been the hero
    or the victim of
    many desperate encounters
    for part of his tail
    has been removed
    and his back has been chewed
    to the spine
    one can see at a glance
    that he is a sneak thief
    and an apache
    a bandit with long
    curved claws
    you see his likes hanging
    about the outdoor markets
    here in paris waiting
    their chance to sneak
    a fish or a bit
    of unregarded meat
    or whimpering
    among the chair legs at the
    sidewalk cafes in the
    evenings or slinking
    down the gutters of
    alleys in the old
    quarters of the town
    he has a raucous voice
    much damaged by the night
    air and yet there is a
    sentimental wheedling
    note in it as well
    and yet withal he carries
    his visible disgrace with
    a jaunty air
    when i asked mehitabel
    where in the name of st denis
    did you pick up that
    romantic criminal
    in the luxembourg gardens
    she replied where
    we had both gone to kill
    birds he has been showing me
    paris he does not
    understand english but speak of
    him with respect
    he is like myself
    an example of the truth
    of the pythagorean idea
    you know that in my body
    which is that of a cat
    there is reincarnated
    the soul of cleopatra
    well this cat here
    was not always a cat either
    he has seen better days
    he tells me that once he was
    a bard and lived here in paris
    tell archy here
    something about yourself francy
    thus encouraged the
    murderous looking animal spoke
    and i append a
    rough translation of
    what he said
    tame cats on a web of the persian woof
    may lick their coats and purr for cream
    but i am a tougher kind of goof
    scheming a freer kind of scheme
    daily i climb where the pigeons gleam
    over the gargoyles of notre dame
    robbing their nests to hear them scream
    for i am a cat of the devil i am
    i ll tell the world i m a hard boiled oeuf
    i rend the clouds when i let off steam
    to the orderly life i cry pouf pouf
    it is worth far less than the bourgeois deem
    my life is a dance on the edge de l abime
    and i am the singer you d love to slam
    who murders the midnight anonyme
    for i am a cat of the devil i am
    when the ribald moon leers over the roof
    and the mist reeks up from the chuckling stream
    i pad the quais on a silent hoof
    dreaming the vagabond s ancient dream
    where the piebald toms of the quartier teem
    and fight for a fish or a mouldy clam
    my rival i rip and his guts unseam
    for i am a cat of the devil i am
    roach i could rattle you rhymes by the ream
    in proof of the fact that i m no spring lamb
    maybe the headsman will finish the theme
    for i am a cat of the devil i am
    mehitabel i said
    your friend is nobody else
    than francois villon
    and he looks it too
    archy

mehitabel sees paris
    paris france
    i have not been
    to geneva but i