The Shepherd and the Sea by Jean de La Fontaine

A shepherd, neighbour to the sea, / Lived with his flock contentedly. / His fortune, though but small, / Was safe within his call. / At last some stranded kegs of gold / Him tempted, and his flock he sold, / Turn'd merchant, and the ocean's waves / Bore all his treasure -- to its caves. / Brought back to keeping sheep once more, / But not chief shepherd, as before, / When sheep were his that grazed the shore, / He who, as Corydon or Thyrsis, / Might once have shone in pastoral verses, / Bedeck'd with rhyme and metre, / Was nothing now but Peter. / But time and toil redeem'd in full / Those harmless creatures rich in wool; / And as the lulling winds, one day, / The vessels wafted with a gentle motion, / 'Want you,' he cried, 'more money, Madam Ocean? / Address yourself to some one else, I pray; / You shall not get it out of me! / I know too well your treachery.'

This tale's no fiction, but a fact, / Which, by experience back'd, / Proves that a single penny, / At present held, and certain, / Is worth five times as many, / Of Hope's, beyond the curtain; / That one should be content with his condition, / And shut his ears to counsels of ambition, / More faithless than the wreck-strown sea, and which / Doth thousands beggar where it makes one rich, -- / Inspires the hope of wealth, in glorious forms, / And blasts the same with piracy and storms.[1]