Explore "Haec Fabula Docet" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A rat who'd gorged a box of bane / And suffered an internal pain, / Came from his hole to die (the label / Required it if the rat were able) / And found outside his habitat / A limpid stream. Of bane and rat / 'T was all unconscious; in the sun / It ran and prattled just for fun.
Keen to allay his inward throes, / The beast immersed his filthy nose / And drank -- then, bloated by the stream, / And filled with superheated steam, / Exploded with a rascal smell, / Remarking, as his fragments fell / Astonished in the brook: "I'm thinking / This water's damned unwholesome drinking!"