By Jean de La Fontaine
The tenant of a bog,
An envious little frog,
Not bigger than an egg,
A stately bullock spies,
And, smitten with his size,
Attempts to be as big.
With earnestness and pains,
She stretches, swells, and strains,
And says, "Sister Frog, look here! see me!
Is this enough?" "No, no."
"Well, then, is this?" "Poh! poh!
Enough! you don't begin to be."
And thus the reptile sits,
Enlarging till she splits.
The world is full of folks
Of just such wisdom;—
The lordly dome provokes
The cit to build his dome;
And, really, there is no telling
How much great men set little ones a-swelling.
Notes
The story of this fable is given in Horace, Satires, 2. 3, Phaedrus and Corrozet have also versions of it. Gilles Corrozet was one of the French fabulists immediately preceding La Fontaine. He was a Parisian bookseller-author who lived between 1516 and 1568.
