The Squirrel

Kriloff’s Original Fables
A Squirrel on a lion waited,
How, when, or where he served, my story does not say, The point is that his service pleased more every day
;
And those that lions serve are ever highly rated,
It is no trifle that. So, to reward him well, They promised nuts, a cartload—promised while were
flying
The years, and oft the Squirrel, of hunger nearly dying,
Had still to grin and jape, and gulp the tears that fell, He wistfully regards the wood, and there they cluster
Brightly everywhere, his friends on high
;
He can but note them from the corner of his eye, Though in his ear they seem to crackle where they muster. Our Squirrel towards the nuts but looks, but moves a leg, And he is stopped—in vain to beg
—
The lion asks for him ; they call, and push, and bluster. At last our Squirrel’s grown a worn-out aged thing
;
‘Tis time that he resign, he wearies now the king.
To leave he is permitted,
And then a load of nuts are at once to him remitted. The nuts are glorious, none such on earth i’ sooth ;
–
All chosen ones : nuts upon nuts—a wonder ! There is but one small blunder
—
The Squirrel has not got a tooth.