Царь леса – лев, могуч и горделив,
Зверям, охотясь, не давал пощады
И, свежей плотью голод утолив,
В пещере отдыхал в тени прохлады.
Жестокость – бог его, а мощь – отрада,
А слава вся – в безжалостных когтях.
Но раз на льва напала – вот досада! –
Оса, что обитала в тех краях;

Стал смерти он желать себе со зла.
Так слабость силе досадить смогла.


Edmund Spenser
VISIONS OF THE WORLDS VANITIE
X

A mighty Lyon, lord of all the wood,
Having his hunger throughly satisfide
With pray of beasts and spoyle of living blood,
Safe in his dreadles den him thought to hide:
His sternesse was his prayse, his strength his pride,
And all his glory in his cruell clawes.
I saw a Wasp, that fiercely him defide,
And bad him battaile even to his iawes;
Sore he him stong, that it the blood forth drawes,
And his proude heart is fild with fretting ire:
In vaine he threats his teeth, his tayle, his pawes,
And from his bloodie eyes doth sparkle fire;
That dead himselfe he wisheth for despight.
So weakest may anoy the most of might!