The Members and the Belly by Jean de La Fontaine

Perhaps, had I but shown due loyalty, / This book would have begun with royalty, / Of which, in certain points of view, / Boss[1] Belly is the image true, / In whose bereavements all the members share: / Of whom the latter once so weary were, / As all due service to forbear, / On what they called his idle plan, / Resolved to play the gentleman, / And let his lordship live on air. / 'Like burden-beasts,' said they, / 'We sweat from day to day; / And all for whom, and what? / Ourselves we profit not. / Our labour has no object but one, / That is, to feed this lazy glutton. / We'll learn the resting trade / By his example's aid. ' / So said, so done; all labour ceased; / The hands refused to grasp, the arms to strike; / All other members did the like. / Their boss might labour if he pleased! / It was an error which they soon repented, / With pain of languid poverty acquainted. / The heart no more the blood renew'd, / And hence repair no more accrued / To ever-wasting strength; / Whereby the mutineers, at length, / Saw that the idle belly, in its way, / Did more for common benefit than they.

[1]: _Boss_. -- A word probably more familiar to hod-carriers than to lexicographers; qu. derived from the French _bosseman_, or the English _boatswain_, pronounced _bos'n_? It denotes a "master" of some practical "art. " Master Belly, says Rabelais, was the first Master of Arts in the world. -- Translator. The name used by La Fontaine is "Messer Gaster. " To which he puts a footnote stating that he meant "L'estomac. " He took the name from Rabelais, Book IV., ch. 57, where it occurs thus: -- "Messer Gaster est le premier maître ès arts de ce monde.... Son mandement est nommé: Faire le fault, sans delay, ou mourir. "