XI The Lion and the Rat17
To show to all your kindness, it behoves:
There’s none so small but you his aid may need.
I quote two fables for this weighty creed,
Which either of them fully proves.
From underneath the sward
A rat, quite off his guard,
Popp’d out between a lion’s paws.
The beast of royal bearing
Show’d what a lion was
The creature’s life by sparing—
A kindness well repaid;
For, little as you would have thought
His majesty would ever need his aid,
It proved full soon
A precious boon.
Forth issuing from his forest glen,
T’ explore the haunts of men,
In lion net his majesty was caught,
From which his strength and rage
Served not to disengage.
The rat ran up, with grateful glee,
Gnaw’d off a rope, and set him free.
By time and toil we sever
What strength and rage could never.
[17] Aesop. In the original editions of La Fontaine’s Fables, XI. and XII. are printed together, and headed “Fables XI. et XII.”