To me the shade of Trees that here shall grow.
And must you then destroy
My only joy in life, another's joy?
That is a fruit which I can taste to-day
To-morrow taste perhaps,
Or e'en beyond the lapse
Of years; and I may see the dawnlight grey,
And the first beam that braves
The Earth's reluctant gloom, above your graves."
The Old Man reasoned well. One of the Three
Shipped to America, was lost at sea.
The second, hardly luckier than the first,
Inspired by thirst
For glory, on the field of battle quaffed
Instead Death's bitter draught.
The third engaged in peaceful husbandry,
And meeting thus the stroke of Destiny,
Fell from a tree he was about to graft.
The Greybeard mourned them. Vigorous yet and hale
He on their Monument engraved this Tale.
(La Fontaine, Fables, Vol. XI, No. 8. Translated by Paul Hookham.)
A SPARROW and a Cat were bosom friends
Contemporaneous as to age,
Their infancy,—on which so much depends—
They passed together; side by side were laid
