A poem composed by Data in praise of his cat Spot, written in strict metre and dense scientific vocabulary, and read at a poetry recital aboard the Enterprise-D in Schisms.
Ode to Spot is the best known of Data's attempts at verse. He reads it to an audience of shipmates in the opening scene of the sixth-season episode Schisms, set in 2369, as part of an evening of his own poetry.
The ode is technically faultless and entirely without feeling. It addresses the cat by its taxonomic name, goes on to consider its anatomy, hearing and purring in the language of a research paper, and ends by declaring the animal a true and valued friend.
The listeners do their best, though Riker keeps nodding off, a symptom, as it turns out, of the nightly abductions the episode is about. Geordi La Forge later tells Data, as gently as he can, that the poems are clever but do not make a listener feel anything.