Read "The Frog and the Tadpole" by Tomás de Iriarte online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On Tagus' banks, in artless wonder, / A little Tadpole, on a canebrake gazing, / Long with its mother chatted of the leaves, / Of the huge stalks, and verdure so amazing; / But now the air with the fierce tempest heaves, / And the rough winds the canebrake rent asunder -- / A broken cane into the stream fell over; / "Come, look, my child," now said the thoughtful mother, / "Without, so strong, luxuriant and smooth -- / Within, all pith and emptiness, forsooth!"
If our good Frog some poets' works had read, / Perchance, of them she might the same have said.