The Boar and the Nightingales

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

A rich man, foolish and vain,
qualities that sometimes go together,
believed he had a divine taste for all the arts,
and thought his gold gave him genius.
Every day at his table were gathered
painters, sculptors, scholars, artists, wits,
who lavished homage upon him,
showed him drawings, read him their works,
listened to the advice he deigned to give them,
and called him Maecenas while eating his dinner.
Walking one evening in his solitary park,
followed by a gardener, a man learned and sensible,
he saw a boar plowing the earth,
as they sometimes do to sharpen their tusks.
Around the boar, blackbirds, warblers,
above all the nightingales, flitting, pausing,
repeated in rivalry their sweet little songs,
and always followed him singing.
The animal listened to the harmonious warbling
with the gravity of a learned connoisseur,
sometimes lowered his snout as a sign of favor,
or else, shaking it, refused his suffrage.
What is this? Said the financier:
what! The songsters of the grove
have chosen this wild animal for their judge!
No indeed, answers the gardener;
from the earth freshly plowed by him
have come several worms, an excellent quarry
that alone attracts these birds:
they follow after him
only to eat these little worms;
and the imbecile believes it is for his merit.

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-the-boar-and-the-nightingales-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian/