Explore "The Dragon with Many Heads, and the Dragon with Many Tails" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
An envoy of the Porte Sublime, / As history says, once on a time, / Before th' imperial German court[1] / Did rather boastfully report, / The troops commanded by his master's firman, / As being a stronger army than the German: / To which replied a Dutch attendant, / 'Our prince has more than one dependant / Who keeps an army at his own expense. ' / The Turk, a man of sense, / Rejoin'd, 'I am aware / What power your emperor's servants share. / It brings to mind a tale both strange and true, / A thing which once, myself, I chanced to view. / I saw come darting through a hedge, / Which fortified a rocky ledge, / A hydra's hundred heads; and in a trice / My blood was turning into ice. / But less the harm than terror, -- / The body came no nearer; / Nor could, unless it had been sunder'd, / To parts at least a hundred. / While musing deeply on this sight, / Another dragon came to light, / Whose single head avails / To lead a hundred tails: / And, seized with juster fright, / I saw him pass the hedge, -- / Head, body, tails, -- a wedge / Of living and resistless powers. -- / The other was your emperor's force; this ours. '[2]
[1]: _German court_. -- The court of the "Holy Roman Empire" is here meant.