The Man Between Two Ages, and His Two Mistresses

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

A man of middle age,
And tending toward gray,
Judged that it was the season
To think of marriage.
He had cash on hand,
And therefore
The means to choose. All wanted to please him;
In which our lover was in no such hurry;
To aim well is no small affair.
Two widows had the largest share of his heart:
One still green, and the other a bit well-ripened,
But who repaired by her art
What nature had destroyed.
These two Widows, in jesting,
In laughing, in feting him,
Would sometimes go dressing him up,
That is to say, fixing his head.
The Old one at every moment carried off from her side
A little of the black hair that remained,
So that her lover might be more to her liking.
The Young one ravaged the white hairs in her turn.
Both did so much that our gray head
Remained without hair, and suspected the trick.
I give you, he told them, a thousand thanks, fair ladies,
Who have so well shorn me;
I have gained more than lost:
For of Hymen there is no news.
The one I would take would want in her way
That I live, and not in mine.
There is no bald head that holds,
I am obliged to you, fair ladies, for the lesson.

Jean de La Fontaine

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

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