Explore "The Lion and the Rat" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To show to all your kindness, it behoves: / There's none so small but you his aid may need. / I quote two fables for this weighty creed, / Which either of them fully proves. / From underneath the sward / A rat, quite off his guard, / Popp'd out between a lion's paws. / The beast of royal bearing / Show'd what a lion was / The creature's life by sparing -- / A kindness well repaid; / For, little as you would have thought / His majesty would ever need his aid, / It proved full soon / A precious boon. / Forth issuing from his forest glen, / T' explore the haunts of men, / In lion net his majesty was caught, / From which his strength and rage / Served not to disengage. / The rat ran up, with grateful glee, / Gnaw'd off a rope, and set him free.
By time and toil we sever / What strength and rage could never.[1]
[1]: Aesop. In the original editions of La Fontaine's Fables, XI. and XII. are printed together, and headed "Fables XI. et XII. "