XII. The Stag at the Fountain

Full often what you now despise

Proves better than the things you prize;

Let Esop’s narrative decide:

A Stag beheld, with conscious pride,

(As at the fountain-head he stood)

His image in the silver flood,

And there extols his branching horns,

While his poor spindle-shanks he scorns—

But, lo! he hears the hunter’s cries,

And, frighten’d, o’er the champaign flies—

His swiftness baffles the pursuit:

At length a wood receives the brute,

And by his horns entangled there,

The pack began his flesh to tear:

Then dying thus he wail’d his fate:

“Unhappy me! and wise too late!

How useful what I did disdain!

How grievous that which made me vain.”

Riley