Java String.split pass in precompiled regex for performance reasons

As the question states given the following code:

public class Foo
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {  
         String test = "Cats go meow";  
         String[] tokens = test.split(" ");
   }
}

is it possible to precompile that regex in the split function along the lines of this:

public class Foo
{  
   Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(" ");
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {  
         String test = "Cats go meow";  
         String[] tokens = test.split(pattern);
   }
}