Swan, Pike And Crawfish

Ivan KrylovIvan Krylov13 Feb 1769 – 21 Nov 1844

1 min read · 12.8K reads

When partners can't agree
Their dealings come to naught
And trouble is their labor's only fruit.
____________

Once Crawfish, Swan and Pike
Set out to pull a loaded cart,
And all together settled in the traces;
They pulled with all their might, but still the cart refused to budge!
The load it seemed was not too much for them:
Yet Crawfish scrambled backwards,
Swan strained up skywards, Pike pulled toward the sea.
Who's guilty here and who is right is
not for us to say-
But anyway the cart's still there today.

Ivan Krylov
About the poet

Ivan Krylov

Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (Russian: Ива́н Андре́евич Крыло́в; February 13, 1769 – November 21, 1844) is Russia's best-known fabulist and probably the most epigrammatic of all Russian authors. Formerly a dramatist and journalist, he only discovered his true genr…

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