The Peasant of the Danube by Jean de La Fontaine

To judge no man by outside view, / Is good advice, though not quite new. / Some time ago a mouse's fright / Upon this moral shed some light. / I have for proof at present, / With, Aesop and good Socrates,[1] / Of Danube's banks a certain peasant, / Whose portrait drawn to life, one sees, / By Marc Aurelius, if you please. / The first are well known, far and near: / I briefly sketch the other here. / The crop upon his fertile chin / Was anything but soft or thin; / Indeed, his person, clothed in hair, / Might personate an unlick'd bear. / Beneath his matted brow there lay / An eye that squinted every way; / A crooked nose and monstrous lips he bore, / And goat-skin round his trunk he wore, / With bulrush belt. And such a man as this is / Was delegate from towns the Danube kisses, / When not a nook on earth there linger'd / By Roman avarice not finger'd. / Before the senate thus he spoke: -- / 'Romans and senators who hear, / I, first of all, the gods invoke, / The powers whom mortals justly fear, / That from my tongue there may not fall / A word which I may need recall. / Without their aid there enters nought / To human hearts of good or just: / Whoever leaves the same unsought, / Is prone to violate his trust; / The prey of Roman avarice, / Ourselves are witnesses of this. / Rome, by our crimes, our scourge has grown, / More than by valour of her own. / Romans, beware lest Heaven, some day, / Exact for all our groans the pay, / And, arming us, by just reverse, / To do its vengeance, stern, but meet, / Shall pour on you the vassal's curse, / And place your necks beneath our feet! / And wherefore not? For are you better / Than hundreds of the tribes diverse / Who clank the galling Roman fetter? / What right gives you the universe? / Why come and mar our quiet life? / We till'd our acres free from strife; / In arts our hands were skill'd to toil, / As well as o'er the generous soil. / What have you taught the Germans brave? / Apt scholars, had but they / Your appetite for sway, / They might, instead of you, enslave, / Without your inhumanity. / That which your praetors perpetrate / On us, as subjects of your state, / My powers would fail me to relate. / Profaned their altars and their rites, / The pity of your gods our lot excites. / Thanks to your representatives, / In you they see but shameless thieves, / Who plunder gods as well as men. / By sateless avarice insane, / The men that rule our land from this / Are like the bottomless abyss. / To satisfy their lust of gain, / Both man and nature toil in vain. / Recall them; for indeed we will / Our fields for such no longer till. / From all our towns and plains we fly / For refuge to our mountains high. / We quit our homes and tender wives, / To lead with savage beasts our lives -- / No more to welcome into day / A progeny for Rome a prey. / And as to those already born -- / Poor helpless babes forlorn! -- / We wish them short career in time: / Your praetors force us to the crime. / Are they our teachers? Call them home, -- / They teach but luxury and vice, -- / Lest Germans should their likes become, / In fell remorseless avarice. / Have we a remedy at Rome? / I'll tell you here how matters go. / Hath one no present to bestow, / No purple for a judge or so, / The laws for him are deaf and dumb; / Their minister has aye in store / A thousand hindrances or more. / I'm sensible that truths like these / Are not the things to please. / I've done. Let death avenge you here / Of my complaint, a little too sincere.'

[1]: Aesop and Socrates are usually represented as very ugly.