The Frog Who Wanted to Make Herself as Big as the Ox

Fable by Jean De La Fontaine Collection The FablesThemes AnimalsPeriod 17th century

A Frog saw an Ox
That seemed to her of fine size.
She, who was not as big as an egg,
Envious, stretches, and puffs, and strains herself,
To equal the animal in size,
Saying: “Look well, my sister;
Is this enough? tell me; am I not there yet?
– Not at all. – Here I am then? – Not at all. – There I am?
– You are not close to it.” The puny creature
Puffed herself so well that she burst.
The world is full of people who are no wiser:
Every bourgeois wants to build like the great lords,
Every petty prince has ambassadors,
Every marquis wants to have pages.

Jean de La Fontaine

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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