The Hornets and the Bees by Jean de La Fontaine

"The artist by his work is known. " -- / A piece of honey-comb, one day, / Discover'd as a waif and stray, / The hornets treated as their own. / Their title did the bees dispute, / And brought before a wasp the suit. / The judge was puzzled to decide, / For nothing could be testified / Save that around this honey-comb / There had been seen, as if at home, / Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures, / Much like the bees in wings and features. / But what of that? for marks the same, / The hornets, too, could truly claim. / Between assertion, and denial, / The wasp, in doubt, proclaim'd new trial; / And, hearing what an ant-hill swore, / Could see no clearer than before. / 'What use, I pray, of this expense? ' / At last exclaim'd a bee of sense. / 'We've labour'd months in this affair, / And now are only where we were. / Meanwhile the honey runs to waste: / 'Tis time the judge should show some haste. / The parties, sure, have had sufficient bleeding, / Without more fuss of scrawls and pleading. / Let's set ourselves at work, these drones and we, / And then all eyes the truth may plainly see, / Whose art it is that can produce / The magic cells, the nectar juice. ' / The hornets, flinching on their part, / Show that the work transcends their art. / The wasp at length their title sees, / And gives the honey to the bees. / Would God that suits at laws with us / Might all be managed thus! / That we might, in the Turkish mode, / Have simple common sense for code! / They then were short and cheap affairs, / Instead of stretching on like ditches, / Ingulfing in their course all riches, -- / The parties leaving for their shares, / The shells (and shells there might be moister) / From which the court has suck'd the oyster.[1][2]

[1]: _The court has suck'd the oyster_. -- The humorous idea of the lawyers, the litigants, and the oyster, is more fully treated in Fable IX., Book IX.