Explore "The Funeral of the Lioness" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The lion's consort died: / Crowds, gather'd at his side, / Must needs console the prince, / And thus their loyalty evince / By compliments of course; / Which make affliction worse. / Officially he cites / His realm to funeral rites, / At such a time and place; / His marshals of the mace / Would order the affair. / Judge you if all came there. / Meantime, the prince gave way / To sorrow night and day. / With cries of wild lament / His cave he well-nigh rent. / And from his courtiers far and near, / Sounds imitative you might hear.
The court a country seems to me, / Whose people are, no matter what, -- / Sad, gay, indifferent, or not, -- / As suits the will of majesty; / Or, if unable so to be, / Their task it is to seem it all -- / Chameleons, monkeys, great and small. / 'Twould seem one spirit serves a thousand bodies -- / A paradise, indeed, for soulless noddies.