'The Dove and the Ant'

'The Dove and the Ant', an illustration by John Vernon Lord 

in Aesop's Fables, Jonathan Cape, 1989, page 85.

The Text:

The Dove and the Ant

HERE lesser animals th’ example give:

Along a limpid stream a sipping dove,

Beheld a drowning ant that strove to live,

Who just had fallen down the slant.

The bird display’d her wonted love,

On that dread ocean threw a blade of grass,

Which form’d a promontory for the ant,

Who safe again to shore did pass.

A certain beggar wander’d there,

Bare-foot and seeking better fare;

A bow and arrow he had got.

The bird of Venus - sought to destroy,

Nay thought he had her in his pot;

And lick’d his lips for joy.

While he prepar’d to make the dove his prey,

The ant severely stung his heel -

The fellow stamp’d, for she had made him feel,

The dove alarm’d,  fled off, and wing’d away.

Pigeons, said he, at loss of dinner sad,

Are not, I see, so easy to be had.

Moral: One good turn deserves another.

Text: Robert Thomson (an early English translation of La Fontaine 2/12, 1806).

Selected Parallels: Caxton, Remicius  11. La Fontaine 2/12. L’Estrange 203. Chambry 242. Perry 235. TMI B362.