The Oak and the Reed

Fable by Jean De La Fontaine Collection The FablesThemes Art, NaturePeriod 17th century

The Oak one day said to the Reed:
“You have good reason to accuse Nature;
A wren is for you a heavy burden.
The slightest wind, which by chance
Ripples the face of the water,
Forces you to bow your head:
Meanwhile my brow, like the Caucasus,
Not content to stop the sun’s rays,
Defies the effort of the storm.
Everything is North Wind to you, everything seems Zephyr to me.
Even if you were born sheltered by the foliage
With which I cover the neighborhood,
You would not have so much to suffer:
I would defend you from the storm;
But you are born most often
On the humid shores of the Kingdoms of the wind.
Nature toward you seems to me very unjust.
– Your compassion, the Shrub replied,
Comes from a good nature; but leave off this worry.
The winds are less dreadful to me than to you.
I bend, and do not break. You have until now
Against their dreadful blows
Resisted without bending your back;
But let us wait for the end.” As he said these words,
From the edge of the horizon rushes with fury
The most terrible of the children
That the North had ever carried in its flanks.
The Tree holds firm; the Reed bends.
The wind redoubles its efforts,
And does so well that it uproots
Him whose head was near to Heaven
And whose feet touched the Empire of the Dead.

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-oak-and-the-reed-jean-de-la-fontaine/