Colas’s Flock

Fable by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian Period 18th century

At break of day, leaving his hamlet,
Colas, a young shepherd with a rather fine flock,
was leading it to pasture.
On his way he finds a stream
which, the previous night, a dreadful storm
had turned into a torrent: how to cross this water?
Dog, sheep, and shepherd, all stop at the bank.
By taking a detour one could have reached the bridge;
it was surely the safest, but it was the longest:
Colas wants to shorten it. First he considers
that he can cross this river;
and, since his rams are strong,
he concludes that without great effort
the flock will jump. That said, he leaps;
his dog jumps after him; rams start dancing,
racing each other, courage, come on!
After the rams, the wethers;
everything is in the air, everything jumps, and Colas urges them on,
congratulating himself on the method.
The rams, the wethers, jumped quite well:
but then came the ewes,
the lambs, the old ones, the weak, the fearful,
the unruly, a group always numerous,
who refused to jump or jumped in anger,
and, whether from weakness or spite,
let themselves fall into the river.
A quarter of them drowned; another quarter fled,
and perished under the wolf’s tooth.
Colas, reduced to misery,
realized, but too late, that for a good shepherd
the shortest is not the best.

Florian

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-le-troupeau-de-colas-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian-2/