Explore "The Wolves and the Sheep" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
By-gone a thousand years of war, / The wearers of the fleece / And wolves at last made peace; / Which both appear'd the better for; / For if the wolves had now and then / Eat up a straggling ewe or wether, / As often had the shepherd men / Turn'd wolf-skins into leather. / Fear always spoil'd the verdant herbage, / And so it did the bloody carnage. / Hence peace was sweet; and, lest it should be riven, / On both sides hostages were given. / The sheep, as by the terms arranged, / For pups of wolves their dogs exchanged; / Which being done above suspicion, / Confirm'd and seal'd by high commission, / What time the pups were fully grown, / And felt an appetite for prey, / And saw the sheepfold left alone, / The shepherds all away, / They seized the fattest lambs they could, / And, choking, dragg'd them to the wood; / Of which, by secret means apprised, / Their sires, as is surmised, / Fell on the hostage guardians of the sheep, / And slew them all asleep. / So quick the deed of perfidy was done, / There fled to tell the tale not one!
From which we may conclude / That peace with villains will be rued. / Peace in itself, 'tis true, / May be a good for you; / But 'tis an evil, nathless, / When enemies are faithless.[1]