The Eagle, the Wild Sow, and the Cat

A certain hollow tree / Was tenanted by three. / An eagle held a lofty bough, / The hollow root a wild wood sow, / A female cat between the two. / All busy with maternal labours, / They lived awhile obliging neighbours. / At last the cat's deceitful tongue / Broke up the peace of old and young. / Up climbing to the eagle's nest, / She said, with whisker'd lips compress'd, / 'Our death, or, what as much we mothers fear, / That of our helpless offspring dear, / Is surely drawing near. / Beneath our feet, see you not how / Destruction's plotted by the sow? / Her constant digging, soon or late, / Our proud old castle will uproot. / And then -- O, sad and shocking fate! -- / She'll eat our young ones, as the fruit! / Were there but hope of saving one, / 'Twould soothe somewhat my bitter moan. ' / Thus leaving apprehensions hideous, / Down went the puss perfidious / To where the sow, no longer digging, / Was in the very act of pigging. / 'Good friend and neighbour,' whisper'd she, / 'I warn you on your guard to be. / Your pigs should you but leave a minute, / This eagle here will seize them in it. / Speak not of this, I beg, at all, / Lest on my head her wrath should fall. ' / Another breast with fear inspired, / With fiendish joy the cat retired. / The eagle ventured no egress / To feed her young, the sow still less. / Fools they, to think that any curse / Than ghastly famine could be worse! / Both staid at home, resolved and obstinate, / To save their young ones from impending fate, -- / The royal bird for fear of mine, / For fear of royal claws the swine. / All died, at length, with hunger, / The older and the younger; / There staid, of eagle race or boar, / Not one this side of death's dread door; -- / A sad misfortune, which / The wicked cats made rich. / O, what is there of hellish plot / The treacherous tongue dares not! / Of all the ills Pandora's box[1] outpour'd, / Deceit, I think, is most to be abhorr'd.[2]

[1]: _Pandora's box._ -- Pandora, the Eve of the Grecian mythology, was sent to earth with all the human ills and Hope in a box, whence all but Hope escaped. -- _Vide_ Elton's Hesiod, _Works and Days_, I. 114, Bohn's edition, &c.