Explore "The Oil-Merchant's Ass" by Tomás de Iriarte on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Once on a time, an Ass, -- / An Oilman's hack, -- / Bearing upon his back / A huge skin filled with oil, / With foot o'er-worn by toil, / Into his stable sought to pass; / But, stumbling, struck his nose / The cruellest of blows / Upon the door's projecting clamp.
"Now, is it not a shame," -- / Poor Donkey did exclaim, -- / "That I, who every day / Carry tuns of oil, my way / Into my own stable cannot find, / More than if I were stone-blind, / For want of one poor lamp?"
Much I fear, that those who glory / In buying books they never read, / Fare as ill, -- / And deserve no more; -- but, if they will / Grow wiser, let them heed this story.