The Two Goats by Jean de La Fontaine — Read

Since goats have browsed, by freedom fired, / To follow fortune they've aspired. / To pasturage they're wont to roam / Where men are least disposed to come. / If any pathless place there be, / Or cliff, or pendent precipice, / 'Tis there they cut their capers free: / There's nought can stop these dames, I wis. / Two goats, thus self-emancipated, -- / The white that on their feet they wore / Look'd back to noble blood of yore, -- / Once quit the lowly meadows, sated, / And sought the hills, as it would seem: / In search of luck, by luck they met / Each other at a mountain stream. / As bridge a narrow plank was set, / On which, if truth must be confest, / Two weasels scarce could go abreast. / And then the torrent, foaming white, / As down it tumbled from the height, / Might well those Amazons affright. / But maugre such a fearful rapid, / Both took the bridge, the goats intrepid! / I seem to see our Louis Grand[1] / And Philip IV. advance / To the Isle of Conference,[2] / That lies 'twixt Spain and France, / Each sturdy for his glorious land. / Thus each of our adventurers goes, / Till foot to foot, and nose to nose, / Somewhere about the midst they meet, / And neither will an inch retreat. / For why? they both enjoy'd the glory / Of ancestors in ancient story. / The one, a goat of peerless rank, / Which, browsing on Sicilian bank, / The Cyclop gave to Galataea; [3] / The other famous Amalthaea,[4] / The goat that suckled Jupiter, / As some historians aver. / For want of giving back, in troth, / A common fall involved them both. -- / A common accident, no doubt, / On Fortune's changeful route.[5][6]

[1]: _Louis Grand_. -- Louis XIV. See note to Epilogue of Book XI.