Read "The Owl and Lamp" by Tomás de Iriarte online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
There is a set of dastard knaves, / Vile critics, that will wait to make attack / On authors till their victims are -- alack! -- / All safe and quiet in their graves; / For living men, they know, might answer back.
To this same purpose, once a little lay / My old grandmother sang to me, / Recounting how a wandering Owl, one day, / Into a convent chanced to make her way; -- / I'm wrong -- by day it could not be.
For, without doubt, the evening's sun had set / Below the horizon long ago.
Now, as she flew along, our Owl she met / A Lamp or Lanthorn in the passage set -- / Which of the two I do not know.
Turning reluctant back, in angry spite, / Thus spoke she out her mind: / "Ah, Lamp! with what unspeakable delight / I'd suck the oil all out of you this night, / But that my eyes you blind!
But if I cannot now, / Since you are such a blaze of dazzling light, -- / If I should find you, on some other night, / Unlighted, then, I shall be ready quite / To make a feast, I vow. "