Explore "The Fowler, the Hawk, and the Lark" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
From wrongs of wicked men we draw / Excuses for our own: -- / Such is the universal law. / Would you have mercy shown, / Let yours be clearly known.
A fowler's mirror served to snare / The little tenants of the air. / A lark there saw her pretty face, / And was approaching to the place. / A hawk, that sailed on high / Like vapour in the sky, / Came down, as still as infant's breath, / On her who sang so near her death. / She thus escaped the fowler's steel, / The hawk's malignant claws to feel. / While in his cruel way, / The pirate pluck'd his prey, / Upon himself the net was sprung. / 'O fowler,' pray'd he in the hawkish tongue, / 'Release me in thy clemency! / I never did a wrong to thee. ' / The man replied, ''Tis true; / And did the lark to you? '[1]
[1]: Abstemius, 3.