would bow down your frame;
The lightest wind that chance may make
Dimple the surface of the lake
Your head bends low indeed,
The while, like Caucasus, my front
To meet the branding sun is wont,
Nay, more, to take the tempest's brunt.

A blast you feel, I feel a breeze.
Had you been born beneath my roof,
Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof,
Less had you known your life to tease;
I should have sheltered you from storm.
But oftenest you rear your form
On the moist limits of the realm of wind.
Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned."
"Your pity," answers him the Heed,
"Bespeaks you kind; but spare your pain;
I more than you may winds disdain.
I bend, and break not. You, indeed,
Against their dreadful strokes till now
Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow:
But wait we for the end."
Scarce had he spoke,
When fiercely from the far horizon broke
The wildest of the children, fullest fraught
With terror, that till then the North had brought.
The tree holds good; the reed it bends.
The wind redoubled might expends,
And so well works that from his bed
Him it uproots who nigh to heaven his head
Held, and whose feet reached to the kingdom of the dead.

In the fable of the "Rat retired from the World," La Fontaine rallies
the monks. "With French _finesse_, he hits his mark by expressly
avoiding it. "What think you I mean by my disobliging rat? A monk? No,
but a Mahometan devotee; I take it for granted that a monk is always
ready with his help to the needy!"

The sage Levantines have a tale
About a rat that weary grew
Of all the cares which life assail,
And to a Holland cheese withdrew.
His solitude was there profound,
Extending through his world so round.
Our hermit lived on that within;
And soon his industry had been
With claws and teeth so good,
That in his novel heritage,
He had in store for wants of age,
Both house and livelihood.
What more could any rat desire?
He grew fat, fair, and round.
God's blessings thus redound
To those who in his vows retire.
One day this personage devout,
Whose kindness none might doubt,
Was