Explore "The Ass Loaded with Sponges, and the Ass Loaded with Salt" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A man, whom I shall call an ass-eteer, / His sceptre like some Roman emperor bearing, / Drove on two coursers of protracted ear, / The one, with sponges laden, briskly faring; / The other lifting legs / As if he trod on eggs, / With constant need of goading, / And bags of salt for loading. / O'er hill and dale our merry pilgrims pass'd, / Till, coming to a river's ford at last, / They stopp'd quite puzzled on the shore. / Our asseteer had cross'd the stream before; / So, on the lighter beast astride, / He drives the other, spite of dread, / Which, loath indeed to go ahead, / Into a deep hole turns aside, / And, facing right about, / Where he went in, comes out; / For duckings two or three / Had power the salt to melt, / So that the creature felt / His burden'd shoulders free. / The sponger, like a sequent sheep, / Pursuing through the water deep, / Into the same hole plunges / Himself, his rider, and the sponges. / All three drank deeply: asseteer and ass / For boon companions of their load might pass; / Which last became so sore a weight, / The ass fell down, / Belike to drown, / His rider risking equal fate. / A helper came, no matter who. / The moral needs no more ado -- / That all can't act alike, -- / The point I wish'd to strike.[1]
[1]: Aesop.