Alone together, scholar and cat

The Reichenau Primer which contains the poem

Pangur Bán is a poem composed by an Irish monk in the 9th century AD that compares the scholar’s work with the activities of a pet cat, Pangur Bán. It is now preserved in the Reichenau Primer at St. Paul’s Abbey in the Lavanttal, Austria. Below is the translation by W.H. Auden:

Pangur, white Pangur, How happy we are
Alone together, scholar and cat
Each has his own work to do daily;
For you it is hunting, for me study.
Your shining eye watches the wall;
My feeble eye is fixed on a book.
You rejoice, when your claws entrap a mouse;
I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem.
Pleased with his own art, neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever without tedium and envy.

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