The Oak and the Reed

By Jean de La Fontaine

The oak one day addressed the reed:
"To you ungenerous indeed
Has nature been, my humble friend,
With weakness aye obliged to bend.
The smallest bird that flits in air
Is quite too much for you to bear;
The slightest wind that wreathes the lake
Your ever-trembling head does shake.
The while, my towering form
Dares with the mountain top
The solar blaze to stop,
And wrestle with the storm.
What seems to you the blast of death,
To me is but a zephyr's breath.
Beneath my branches had you grown,
That spread far round their friendly bower,
Less suffering would your life have known,
Defended from the tempest's power.
Unhappily you oftenest show
In open air your slender form,
Along the marshes wet and low,
That fringe the kingdom of the storm.
To you, declare I must,
Dame Nature seems unjust."
Then modestly replied the reed:
"Your pity, sir, is kind indeed,
But wholly needless for my sake.
The wildest wind that ever blew
Is safe to me compared with you.
I bend, indeed, but never break.
Thus far, I own, the hurricane
Has beat your sturdy back in vain;
But wait the end." Just at the word,
The tempest's hollow voice was heard.
The North sent forth her fiercest child,
Dark, jagged, pitiless, and wild.
The oak, erect, endured the blow;
The reed bowed gracefully and low.
But, gathering up its strength once more,
In greater fury than before,
The savage blast
Overthrew, at last,
That proud, old, sky-encircled head,
Whose feet entwined the empire of the dead!

The Hornets and the Bees

By Jean de La Fontaine

"The artist by his work is known."—
A piece of honey-comb, one day,
Discovered as a waif and stray,
The hornets treated as their own.
Their title did the bees dispute,
And brought before a wasp the suit.
The judge was puzzled to decide,
For nothing could be testified
Save that around this honey-comb
There had been seen, as if at home,
Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures,
Much like the bees in wings and features.
But what of that? for marks the same,
The hornets, too, could truly claim.
Between assertion, and denial,
The wasp, in doubt, proclaimed new trial;
And, hearing what an ant-hill swore,
Could see no clearer than before.
"What use, I pray, of this expense?"
At last exclaimed a bee of sense.
"We've laboured months in this affair,
And now are only where we were.
Meanwhile the honey runs to waste:
It's time the judge should show some haste.
The parties, sure, have had sufficient bleeding,
Without more fuss of scrawls and pleading.
Let's set ourselves at work, these drones and we,
And then all eyes the truth may plainly see,
Whose art it is that can produce
The magic cells, the nectar juice."
The hornets, flinching on their part,
Show that the work transcends their art.
The wasp at length their title sees,
And gives the honey to the bees.
Would God that suits at laws with us
Might all be managed thus!
That we might, in the Turkish mode,
Have simple common sense for code!
They then were short and cheap affairs,
Instead of stretching on like ditches,
Ingulfing in their course all riches,—
The parties leaving for their shares,
The shells (and shells there might be moister)
From which the court has sucked the oyster.

The Cock and the Pearl

By Jean de La Fontaine

A cock scratched up, one day,
A pearl of purest ray,
Which to a jeweller he bore.
"I think it fine," he said,
"But yet a crumb of bread
To me were worth a great deal more."

So did a dunce inherit
A manuscript of merit,
Which to a publisher he bore.
"It's good," said he, "I'm told,
Yet any coin of gold
To me were worth a great deal more."

The Boy and the Schoolmaster

By Jean de La Fontaine

Wise counsel is not always wise,
As this my tale exemplifies.
A boy, that frolicked on the banks of Seine,
Fell in, and would have found a watery grave,
Had not that hand that plants never in vain
A willow planted there, his life to save.
While hanging by its branches as he might,
A certain sage preceptor came in sight;
To whom the urchin cried, "Save, or I'm drowned!"
The master, turning gravely at the sound,
Thought proper for a while to stand aloof,
And give the boy some seasonable reproof.
"You little wretch! this comes of foolish playing,
Commands and precepts disobeying.
A naughty rogue, no doubt, you are,
Who thus requite your parents" care.
Alas! their lot I pity much,
Whom fate condemns to watch over such."
This having coolly said, and more,
He pulled the drowning lad ashore.

This story hits more marks than you suppose.
All critics, pedants, men of endless prose,—
Three sorts, so richly blessed with progeny,
The house is blessed that does not lodge any,—
May in it see themselves from head to toes.
No matter what the task,
Their precious tongues must teach;
Their help in need you ask,
You first must hear them preach.

The Fox and the Stork

By Jean de La Fontaine

Old Mister Fox was at expense, one day,
To dine old Mistress Stork.
The fare was light, was nothing, sooth to say,
Requiring knife and fork.
That sly old gentleman, the dinner-giver,
Was, you must understand, a frugal liver.
This once, at least, the total matter
Was thinnish soup served on a platter,
For madam's slender beak a fruitless puzzle,
Till all had passed the fox's lapping muzzle.
But, little relishing his laughter,
Old gossip Stork, some few days after,
Returned his Foxship's invitation.
Without a moment's hesitation,
He said he'd go, for he must own he
Never stood with friends for ceremony.
And so, precisely at the hour,
He hied him to the lady's bower;
Where, praising her politeness,
He finds her dinner right nice.
Its punctuality and plenty,
Its viands, cut in mouthfuls dainty,
Its fragrant smell, were powerful to excite,
Had there been need, his foxish appetite.
But now the dame, to torture him,
Such wit was in her,
Served up her dinner
In vases made so tall and slim,
They let their owner's beak pass in and out,
But not, by any means, the fox's snout!
All arts without avail,
With drooping head and tail,
As ought a fox a fowl had cheated,
The hungry guest at last retreated.

You knaves, for you is this recital,
You'll often meet Dame Stork's requital.

The Man Between Two Ages, And His Two Mistresses

By Jean de La Fontaine

A man of middle age, whose hair
Was bordering on the grey,
Began to turn his thoughts and care
The matrimonial way.
By virtue of his ready,
A store of choices had he
Of ladies bent to suit his taste;
On which account he made no haste.
To court well was no trifling art.
Two widows chiefly gained his heart;
The one yet green, the other more mature,
Who found for nature's wane in art a cure.
These dames, amidst their joking and caressing
The man they longed to wed,
Would sometimes set themselves to dressing
His party-coloured head.
Each aiming to assimilate
Her lover to her own estate,
The older piecemeal stole
The black hair from his poll,
While eke, with fingers light,
The young one stole the white.
Between them both, as if by scald,
His head was changed from grey to bald.
"For these," he said, "your gentle pranks,
I owe you, ladies, many thanks.
By being thus well shaved,
I less have lost than saved.
Of Hymen, yet, no news at hand,
I do assure you.
By what I have lost, I understand
It is in your way,
Not mine, that I must pass on.
Thanks, ladies, for the lesson."

Death and the Woodman

By Jean de La Fontaine

A poor wood-chopper, with his fagot load,
Whom weight of years, as well as load, oppressed,
Sore groaning in his smoky hut to rest,
Trudged wearily along his homeward road.
At last his wood on the ground he throws,
And sits him down to think over all his woes.
To joy a stranger, since his hapless birth,
What poorer wretch on this rolling earth?
No bread sometimes, and never a moment's rest;
Wife, children, soldiers, landlords, public tax,
All wait the swinging of his old, worn axe,
And paint the veriest picture of a man unblest.
On Death he calls. Forthwith that monarch grim
Appears, and asks what he should do for him.
"Not much, indeed; a little help I lack—
To put these fagots on my back."

Death ready stands all ills to cure;
But let us not his cure invite.
Than die, it's better to endure,—
Is both a manly maxim and a right.