Explore "The Music of the Future" by Oliver Herford on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The politest musician that ever was seen / Was Montague Meyerbeer Mendelssohn Green.
So extremely polite he would take off his hat / Whenever he happened to meet with a cat.
"It's not that I'm partial to cats," he'd explain; / "Their music to me is unspeakable pain.
There's nothing that causes my flesh so to crawl / As when they perform a G-flat caterwaul.
"Yet I cannot help feeling -- in spite of their din -- / When I hear at a concert the first violin / Interpret some exquisite thing of my own, / If it were not for _cat gut_ I'd never be known.
"And so, when I bow, as you see, to a cat, / It isn't to _her_ that I take off my hat; / But to fugues and sonatas that possibly hide / Uncomposed in her -- well -- in her tuneful inside!"
SONG.
_Gather Kittens while you may, / Time brings only Sorrow; / And the Kittens of To-day / Will be Old Cats To-morrow._