The Fly and the Ant by Jean de La Fontaine

A fly and ant, upon a sunny bank, / Discuss'd the question of their rank. / 'O Jupiter! ' the former said, / 'Can love of self so turn the head, / That one so mean and crawling, / And of so low a calling, / To boast equality shall dare / With me, the daughter of the air? / In palaces I am a guest, / And even at thy glorious feast. / Whene'er the people that adore thee / May immolate for thee a bullock, / I'm sure to taste the meat before thee. / Meanwhile this starveling, in her hillock, / Is living on some bit of straw / Which she has labour'd home to draw. / But tell me now, my little thing, / Do you camp ever on a king, / An emperor, or lady? / I do, and have full many a play-day / On fairest bosom of the fair, / And sport myself upon her hair. / Come now, my hearty, rack your brain / To make a case about your grain. ' / 'Well, have you done? ' replied the ant. / 'You enter palaces, I grant, / And for it get right soundly cursed. / Of sacrifices, rich and fat, / Your taste, quite likely, is the first; -- / Are they the better off for that? / You enter with the holy train; / So enters many a wretch profane. / On heads of kings and asses you may squat; / Deny your vaunting I will not; / But well such impudence, I know, / Provokes a sometimes fatal blow. / The name in which your vanity delights / Is own'd as well by parasites, / And spies that die by ropes -- as you soon will / By famine or by ague-chill, / When Phoebus goes to cheer / The other hemisphere, -- / The very time to me most dear. / Not forced abroad to go / Through wind, and rain, and snow, / My summer's work I then enjoy, / And happily my mind employ, / From care by care exempted. / By which this truth I leave to you, / That by two sorts of glory we are tempted, / The false one and the true. / Work waits, time flies; adieu: -- / This gabble does not fill / My granary or till. '[1]

[1]: Phaedrus, IV. 23.