Page 141 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit

“Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes”
by Thomas Gray, pages 23-24

Vocabulary
azure – blue
demurest – shyest, most reserved
pensive – thoughtful
vies – wagers
tyrian – purple
presumptuous – assumptive
malignant – evil, harmful

1. To what does the speaker compare a lake?

2. What does the cat look like? What was its name?

3. Who or what is the “Presumptuous Maid” of the poem’s fifth stanza?

4. Who are Tom and Susan?

5. What poetic device is exemplified by the phrases “heedless hearts” and “glisters, gold”?

6. At first, Gray makes the reader believe that this poem is simply about the death of a cat.
The last stanza, however, proves otherwise. How does the last stanza change the purpose of
this poem?

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