The Fables of La Fontaine
He points out their example to such men,
And to all strugglers in whatever age;
Enumerates the places where they fought,
And why they vanished from our mortal ken.
In fact, two-thirds of all his song was fraught
With praise of them, page after page.
A Talent had the athlete guaranteed,
But when he read he grudged the meed,
And gave a third: frank was his jest,--
"Castor and Pollux pay the rest;
Celestial pair! they'll see you righted,--
Still I will feast you with the best;
Sup with me, you will be delighted;
The guests are all select, you'll see,
My parents, and friends loved by me;
Be thou, too, of the company."
Simonides consents, partly, perhaps, in fear
To lose, besides his due, the paltry praise.
He goes--they revel and discuss the cheer;
A merry night prepares for jovial days.
A servant enters, tells him at the door
Two men would see him, and without delay.
He leaves the table, not a bit the more
Do jaws and fingers cease their greedy play.
These two men were the Gemini he'd praised.
They thanked him for the homage he had paid;
Then, for reward, told him the while he stayed
The doom'd house would be rased,
And fall about the ears
Of the big boxer and his peers.
The prophecy came true--yes, every tittle;
Snap goes a pillar, thin and brittle.
The roof comes toppling down, and crashes
The feast--the cups, the flagons smashes.
Cupbearers are included in the fall;
Nor is that all:
To make the vengeance for the bard complete,
The athlete's legs are broken too.
A beam snapped underneath his feet,
While half the guests exclaim,
"Lord help us! we are lame."
Fame, with her trumpet, heralds the affair;
Men cry, "A miracle!" and everywhere
They give twice over, without scoff or sneer,
To poet by the gods held dear.
No one of gentle birth but paid him well,
Of their ancestors' deeds to nobly tell.
Let me return unto my text: it pays
The gods and kings to freely praise;
Melpomene, moreover, sometimes traffic makes
Of the ingenious trouble that she takes.
Our art deserves respect, and thus
The great do honour to themselves who honour us.
Olympus and Parnassus once, you see,
Were friends, and liked each other's company.
FABLE XVI.
DEATH AND THE UNHAPPY MAN.
A Miserable Man incessant prayed
To Death for aid.
"Oh, Death!" he cried. "I love thee as a friend!
Come quickly, and my life's long sorrows end!"
Death, wishing to oblige him, ran,
Knocked at the door, entered, and eyed the man.
"What do I see? begone, thou hideous thing!
The very sight
Strikes me with horror and affright!
Begone, old Death!--Away, thou grisly King!"
Mecænas (hearty fellow) somewhere said;
"Let me be gouty, crippled, impotent and lame,
'Tis all the same.
So I but keep on living. Death, thou slave!
Come not at all, and I shall be content."
And that was what the man I mention meant.
FABLE XVII.
THE WOLF TURNED SHEPHERD.
A Wolf who found in cautious flocks
His tithes beginning to be few,
Thought that he'd play the part of Fox,
A character at least quite new.
A Shepherd's hat and coat he took,
And from a branch he made a hook;
Nor did the pastoral pipe forget.
To carry out his schemes he set,
He would have liked to write upon his hat,
"I'm Guillot, Shepherd of these sheep!"
And thus disguised, he came, pit-pat,
And softly stole where fast asleep
Guillot himself lay by a stack,
His dog close cuddling at his back;
His pipe too slept; and half the number
Of the plump sheep was wrapped in slumber.
He's got the dress--could he but mock
The Shepherd's voice, he'd lure the flock:
He thought he could.
That spoiled the whole affair--he'd spoken;
His howl re-echoed through the wood.
The game was up--the spell was broken!
They all awake, dog, Shepherd, sheep.
Poor Wolf, in this distress
And pretty mess,
In clumsy coat bedight,
Could neither run away nor fight.
At last the bubble breaks;
There's always some mistake a rascal makes.
The Wolf like Wolf must always act;
That is a very certain fact.
FABLE XVIII.
THE CHILD AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.
This fable serves to tell, or tries to show
A fools remonstrance often is in vain.
A child fell headlong in the river's flow,
While playing on the green banks of the Seine:
A willow, by kind Providence, grew there,
The branches saved him (rather, God's good care);
Caught in the friendly boughs, he clutched and clung.
The master of the school just then came by.
"Help! help! I'm drowning!" as he gulping hung,
He shouts. The master, with a pompous eye,
Turns and reproves him with much gravity.
"You little ape," he said, "now only see
What comes of all your precious foolery;
A pretty job such little rogues to guard.
Unlucky parents who must watch and thrash.
Such helpless, hopeless, good-for-nothing trash.
I pity them; their woes I understand."
Having said this, he brought the child to land.
In this I blame more people than you guess--
Babblers and censors, pedants, all the three;
Such creatures grow in numbers to excess,
Some blessing seems to swell their progeny.
In every crisis theories they shape,
And exercise their tongues with perfect skill;
Ha! my good friends, first save me from the scrape,
Then make your long speech after, if you will.
FABLE XIX.
THE PULLET AND THE PEARL.
A Fowl, while scratching in the straw,
Finding a pearl without a flaw,
Gave it a lapidary of the day.
"It's very fine, I must repeat;
And yet a single grain of wheat
Is very much more in my way."
A poor uneducated lad
A manuscript as heirloom had.
He took it to a bookseller one day:
"I know," said he, "it's very rare;
But still, a guinea as my share
Is very much more in my way."
FABLE XX.
THE DRONES AND THE BEES.
A Workman by his work you always know.
Some cells of honey had been left unclaimed.
The Drones were first to go
The Bees, to try and show
That they to take the mastership were not ashamed.
Before a Wasp the cause at last they bring;
It is not easy to decide the thing.
The witnesses deposed that round the hive
They long had seen wing'd, buzzing creatures fly,
Brown, and like bees. "Yes, true; but, man alive,
The Drones are also brown; so do not try
To prove it so." The Wasp, on justice bent,
Made new investigations
(Laws of all nations).
To throw more light upon the case,
Searched every place,
Heard a whole ants' nest argue face to face,
Still it grew only darker; that's a fact
(Lease or contract?)
"Oh, goodness gracious! where's the use, my son?"
Cried a wise Bee;
"Why, only see,
For six months now the cause is dragging on,
And we're no further than we were at first;
But what is worst,
The honey's spoiling, and the hive is burst.
'Tis time the judge made haste,
The matter's simmered long enough to waste,
Without rebutters or <i>fi, fa</i>,
Without rejoinders or <i>ca, sa</i>,
John Doe,
Or Richard Roe.
Let's go to work, the wasps and us,
We'll see who best can build and store
The sweetest juice." It's settled thus.
The Drones do badly, as they've done of yore;
The art's beyond their knowledge, quite beyond.
The Wasp adjudges that the honey goes
Unto the Bees: would those of law so fond
Could thus decide the cases justice tries.
Good common sense, instead of Coke and code,
(The Turks in this are really very wise,)
Would save how many a debtor's heavy load.
Law grinds our lives away
With sorrow and delay.
In vain we groan, and grudge
The money given to our long-gowned tutors.
Always at last the oyster's for the judge,
The shells for the poor suitors.
FABLE XXI.
THE OAK AND THE REED.
The Oak said one day to a river Reed,
"You have a right with Nature to fall out.
Even a wren for you's a weight indeed;
The slightest breeze that wanders round about
Makes you first bow, then bend;
While my proud forehead, like an Alp, braves all,
Whether the sunshine or the tempest fall--
A gale to you to me a zephyr is.
Come near my shelter: you'll escape from this;
You'll suffer less, and everything will mend.
I'll keep you warm
From every storm;
And yet you foolish creatures needs must go,
And on the frontiers of old Boreas grow.
Nature to you has been, I think, unjust."
"Your sympathy," replied the Reed, "is kind,
And to my mind
Your heart is good; and yet dismiss your thought.
For us, no more than you, the winds are fraught
With danger, for I bend, but do not break.
As yet, a stout resistance you can make,
And never stoop your back, my friend;
But wait a bit, and let us see the end."
Black, furious, raging, swelling as he spoke,
The fiercest wind that ever yet had broke
From the North's caverns bellowed through the sky.
The Oak held firm, the Reed bent quietly down.
The wind blew faster, and more furiously,
Then rooted up the tree that with its head
Had touched the high clouds in its majesty,
And stretched far downwards to the realms of dead.
FABLE XXII.
AGAINST THOSE WHO ARE HARD TO PLEASE.
Had I when born, from fair Calliope
Received a gift such as she can bestow
Upon her lovers, it should pass from me
To Æsop, and that very soon, I know;
I'd consecrate it to his pleasant lies.
Falsehood and verse have ever been allies;
Far from Parnassus, held in small esteem,
I can do little to adorn his theme,
Or lend a fresher lustre to his song.
I try, that's all--and plan what one more strong
May some day do--
And carry through.
Still, I have written, by-the-bye,
The wolf's speech and the lamb's reply.
What's more, there's many a plant and tree
Were taught to talk, and all by me.
Was that not my enchantment, eh?
"Tut! Tut!" our peevish critics say,
"Your mighty work all told, no more is
Than half-a-dozen baby stories.
Write something more authentic then,
And in a higher tone."--Well, list, my men!--
After ten years of war around their towers,
The Trojans held at bay the Grecian powers;
A thousand battles on Scamander's plain,
Minings, assaults, how many a hero slain!
Yet the proud city stoutly held her own.
Till, by Minerva's aid, a horse of wood,
Before the gates of the brave city stood.
Its flanks immense the sage Ulysses hold,
Brave Diomed, and Ajax, churlish, bold;
These, with their squadrons, will the vast machine
Bear into fated Troy, unheard, unseen--