Explore "The Wolf and the Lamb" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
That innocence is not a shield, / A story teaches, not the longest. / The strongest reasons always yield / To reasons of the strongest.
A lamb her thirst was slaking, / Once, at a mountain rill. / A hungry wolf was taking / His hunt for sheep to kill, / When, spying on the streamlet's brink / This sheep of tender age, / He howl'd in tones of rage, / 'How dare you roil my drink? / Your impudence I shall chastise! ' / 'Let not your majesty,' the lamb replies, / 'Decide in haste or passion! / For sure 'tis difficult to think / In what respect or fashion / My drinking here could roil your drink, / Since on the stream your majesty now faces / I'm lower down, full twenty paces. ' / 'You roil it,' said the wolf; 'and, more, I know / You cursed and slander'd me a year ago. ' / 'O no! how could I such a thing have done! / A lamb that has not seen a year, / A suckling of its mother dear? ' / 'Your brother then. ' 'But brother I have none. ' / 'Well, well, what's all the same, / 'Twas some one of your name. / Sheep, men, and dogs of every nation, / Are wont to stab my reputation, / As I have truly heard. ' / Without another word, / He made his vengeance good -- / Bore off the lambkin to the wood, / And there, without a jury, / Judged, slew, and ate her in his fury.[1]