法苑珠林 78.23

English (machine translation) 78.23

Language: English

78.23

"This child is not mine; / a father of the wilds, a mother of the village. / Coming together they produced a child / that is neither crow nor chicken. / If it wishes to imitate its father's cry, / it was nonetheless born of a chicken; / if it wishes to imitate its mother's call, / its father was nonetheless a crow. / Imitating the crow, it sounds like a chicken; / imitating the chicken, it makes the sound of a crow. / If it tries to learn both crow and chicken, / neither of the two can be accomplished."

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Linked texts (1)

法苑珠林 — 道世, Classical Chinese