“Fat lazy sleepy Highlander breed cats and red death in the style of Poe”

Upon the battered tartan chaise, beneath the lantern’s amber gleam,  
Fat Highlanders—proud balls of cream—  
Languid lions, deep in dreaming, rumbling with ancestral theme,  
Their ears like tufts of knotted wool, flick at the dancing flame—  
On paws, immense and velvet, pooled across the ancient floor,  
They sprawl with utter, lordly claim  
Within the stately, draughty core  
Of shadow, drift, and drowsy lore.

O heavy lords, entombed in fur! No mouse nor moth dare trespass near—  
Their world is drowse, their kingdom slur  
Of purring, muffled, soft and drear.  
Yet who winds through the winking gloom—who scratches at the pane?  
The wind, or something more profane?  
A ruby gust—red death!—perfume  
That whispers tales of whispery doom,  
Its cloak a-shadowed, scarlet rain.

It does not startle whiskered heads; the Highlanders stretch, uncouth,  
Beneath the fraying tartan spreads,  
They mock the crimson ghost of truth.  
"O fearsome plague, O shade of dread—  
We answer you by sleep alone;"  
Each beast within its lion-bed  
Heeds not the world swept to the bone,  
Dreaming on in Cawdor stone.

For while the world, in petty haste,  
Quickens, shivers, flees, and dies—  
These portly cats, in drowsy grace,  
Greet darkness with indifferent eyes.  
No ghoul nor mask, no ringing knell—  
Can rouse such souls from slumber’s well;  
For Highlanders, through death’s own red,  
Will ever claim in life or dead,  
The right to sleep—content and fed.

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