Original content

English translation

A sparrow reclaimed its inherited home and built a nest in a gap of a stork's dwelling. They said to it: What fittingness is there for you, that with a body so tiny you should be neighbor to a creature so large, and set yourself equal to it in place of residence and abode of stability? It said: I too know this much, yet I cannot act upon what I know. In my neighborhood there is a snake, so that every year when I raise chicks and nurture them with my heart's blood, it suddenly attacks my house and makes my chicks its own nourishment. This year I have fled from it and clung to the skirt of this great one's fortune; I hope that it will obtain justice for me against it, and that, just as every year it has made my chicks its nourishment, this year it will make it the nourishment of my chicks. When the fox is in the thicket where the lion dwells, It lives safe from the wound of wolves' claws. From the tyranny of the small, that one gains safety Who takes up abode in the vicinity of the great.