A Stag, drinking from a crystal spring, saw himself mirrored in the clear water. He greatly admired the graceful arch of his antlers, but he was very much ashamed of his spindling legs.
“How can it be,” he sighed, “that I should be cursed with such legs when I have so magnificent a crown.”
At that moment he scented a panther and in an instant was bounding away through the forest. But as he ran his wide-spreading antlers caught in the branches of the trees, and soon the Panther overtook him. Then the Stag perceived that the legs of which he was so ashamed would have saved him had it not been for the useless ornaments on his head.
Credits
Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, believed to have lived around 620–564 BCE, whose fables have shaped moral literature across cultures for over two millennia. "The Stag And His Reflection" is one of his most enduring animal fables, appearing in collections throughout antiquity and later immortalised in verse by the French poet Jean de La Fontaine.
