The Hare and the Frogs by Jean de La Fontaine

Once in his bed deep mused the hare, / (What else but muse could he do there? ) / And soon by gloom was much afflicted; -- / To gloom the creature's much addicted. / 'Alas! these constitutions nervous,' / He cried, 'how wretchedly they serve us! / We timid people, by their action, / Can't eat nor sleep with satisfaction; / We can't enjoy a pleasure single, / But with some misery it must mingle. / Myself, for one, am forced by cursed fear / To sleep with open eye as well as ear. / "Correct yourself," says some adviser. / Grows fear, by such advice, the wiser? / Indeed, I well enough descry / That men have fear, as well as I. ' / With such revolving thoughts our hare / Kept watch in soul-consuming care. / A passing shade, or leaflet's quiver / Would give his blood a boiling fever. / Full soon, his melancholy soul / Aroused from dreaming doze / By noise too slight for foes, / He scuds in haste to reach his hole. / He pass'd a pond; and from its border bogs, / Plunge after plunge, in leap'd the timid frogs, / 'Aha! I do to them, I see,' / He cried, 'what others do to me. / The sight of even me, a hare, / Sufficeth some, I find, to scare. / And here, the terror of my tramp / Hath put to rout, it seems, a camp. / The trembling fools! they take me for / The very thunderbolt of war! / I see, the coward never skulk'd a foe / That might not scare a coward still below. '[1]

[1]: Aesop.