C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Husbandman and the Stork
By Babrius (c. Second Century A.D.)
T
And caught the cranes that on his tillage fed;
And him a limping stork began to pray,
Who fell with them into the farmer’s way:—
“I am no crane: I don’t consume the grain:
That I’m a stork is from my color plain;
A stork, than which no better bird doth live;
I to my father aid and succor give.”
The man replied:—“Good stork, I cannot tell
Your way of life: but this I know full well,
I caught you with the spoilers of my seed;
With them, with whom I found you, you must bleed.”
’Gainst you as them, e’en though you no man wrong.