Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric,
   How many mice and rats hast in thy days
   Destroy'd? -- How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
 With those bright languid segments green, and prick
 Those velvet ears -- but pr'ythee do not stick
   Thy latent talons in me -- and upraise
   Thy gentle mew -- and tell me all thy frays
 Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.

 Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists --
   For all the wheezy asthma, -- and for all
 Thy tail's tip is nick'd off -- and though the fists
   Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
 Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
   In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.

Keats doesn’t need any introduction anyway ;) As for the poem itself, it’s a charming commentary on an old cat. Light-hearted, enjoyable - and brilliant.

— Suresh

Thomas adds

A classical Petrarchan sonnet: iambic pentameter, the octave rhyming abbaabba, the sestet cdcdcd. It’s a testimony to the power of the sonnet that even the Romantics, with their emphasis on freedom and spontaneity, continued to write notable pieces in this form… today’s poem may not soar to the heights of Keats’ great “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”¹, but it does not aspire to do so in the first place. Instead, as Suresh said, it remains an excellent example of light verse, charming and enjoyable.

— Thomas