The Peasant and the Horse

Kriloff’s Original Fables
A Peasant oats sowed in a field one spring
;
Which when a young Horse saw, He, grumbling thus, did his conclusions draw : ” Of mighty use the oats he here doth bring ! They say, that men are wiser far than we ; What stupider, more laughable to see, Than digging up a field with trouble,
Only to spread o’er it a double
Layer of oats, to serve no earthly end ! Had they to me been given, to my bay friend ; Did but his hungry fowls them partly get, One might think that they’d turn out useful yet
:
Had he but kept them ; stingy I should have thought him ; But throw them all away ! To that stupidity hath brought
him.”
Meanwhile, the oats in autumn were reaped and in the stable, And our pert Horse to feed on them proved well that he was able.
Reader ! no doubt, it cannot have been long
Before you saw the Horse had judged quite wrong ; But, from the earliest times unto our days,
Is it not thus that bold Man weighs
The will of Providence,
As if unto his blindness did belong,
Not knowing Him, nor any of His ways, To judge His wisdom and His competence ?