Explore "The Ploughman and his Sons" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The farmer's patient care and toil / Are oftener wanting than the soil.
A wealthy ploughman drawing near his end, / Call'd in his sons apart from every friend, / And said, 'When of your sire bereft, / The heritage our fathers left / Guard well, nor sell a single field. / A treasure in it is conceal'd: / The place, precisely, I don't know, / But industry will serve to show. / The harvest past, Time's forelock take, / And search with plough, and spade, and rake; / Turn over every inch of sod, / Nor leave unsearch'd a single clod. ' / The father died. The sons -- and not in vain -- / Turn'd o'er the soil, and o'er again; / That year their acres bore / More grain than e'er before. / Though hidden money found they none, / Yet had their father wisely done, / To show by such a measure, / That toil itself is treasure.[1]
[1]: Aesop.