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A Swallow in her travels
Had learned a great deal.
Whoever has seen much
May have retained much.
She even foresaw the slightest storms,
And before they had broken,
She announced them to the Sailors.
It happened that at the time when hemp is sown,
She saw a peasant covering many furrows with it.
“This does not please me,” she said to the little Birds:
“I pity you; for my part, in this extreme peril,
I shall know how to fly away, or live in some corner.
Do you see that hand moving through the air?
A day will come, and it is not far off,
When what it scatters will be your ruin.
From it will be born snares to wrap you up,
And nooses to catch you,
In short many and many a device
That will cause in the season
Your death or your prison:
Beware the cage or the cauldron!
That is why,” the Swallow told them,
“Eat this grain; and believe me.”
The Birds made fun of her:
They found too much to eat in the fields.
When the hemp field was green,
The Swallow told them: “Pull out, strand by strand,
What this cursed grain has produced,
Or be sure of your loss.
— Prophet of misfortune, chatterbox, they said,
What a fine task you give us!
We would need a thousand people
To pick clean this whole district.”
The hemp being fully grown,
The Swallow added: “This is not going well;
Bad seed grows quickly.
But since until now I have been believed in nothing,
As soon as you see that the earth
Is covered, and that, no longer busy
With their wheat,
People will wage war on the little birds;
When limed twigs and nets
Catch little Birds,
No longer fly from place to place,
Stay at home, or change climate:
Imitate the Duck, the Crane, and the Snipe.
But you are not able
To cross, as we do, the deserts and the waves,
Nor to go seek other worlds;
That is why you have only one sure course:
It is to shut yourselves in the holes of some wall.”
The little Birds, weary of hearing her,
Began to chatter as confusedly
As the Trojans did when poor Cassandra
Merely opened her mouth.
It turned out for some as for others:
Many a little bird found itself held as a slave.
We listen only to instincts that are our own,
And believe in harm only when it has come.
Jean de La Fontaine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-the-swallow-and-the-little-birds-jean-de-la-fontaine/