The Hare and the Frogs
Fable de Jean de la Fontaine
 Fables of la Fontaine > Book II > The Hare and the Frogs |
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| Once in his bed deep mused the hare, (What else but muse could he do there?) And soon by gloom was much afflicted; To gloom the creature's much addicted. "Alas! these constitutions nervous," He cried, "how wretchedly they serve us! We timid people, by their action, Can't eat nor sleep with satisfaction; We can't enjoy a pleasure single, But with some misery it must mingle. Myself, for one, am forced by cursed fear To sleep with open eye as well as ear. "Correct yourself," says some adviser. Grows fear, by such advice, the wiser? Indeed, I well enough descry That men have fear, as well as I." With such revolving thoughts our hare Kept watch in soul consuming care. A passing shade, or leaflet's quiver Would give his blood a boiling fever. Full soon, his melancholy soul Aroused from dreaming doze By noise too slight for foes, He scuds in haste to reach his hole. He passed a pond; and from its border bogs, Plunge after plunge, in leaped the timid frogs, "Aha! I do to them, I see," He cried, "what others do to me. The sight of even me, a hare, Suffices some, I find, to scare. And here, the terror of my tramp Has put to rout, it seems, a camp. The trembling fools! they take me for The very thunderbolt of war! I see, the coward never skulked a foe That might not scare a coward still below." |
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