<P> The fox who longed for grapes, beholds with pain The tempting clusters were too high to gain; Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile, And cried,' They're sharp and hardly worth my while .' </P> <P> The second also accompanies an illustrated edition, in this case the work of Walter Crane in Baby's Own Aesop (1887). Each fable has been reduced to a limerick by W.J. Linton and is enclosed within the design . "The Fox and the Grapes" has been given the moral' The grapes of disappointment are always sour' and runs as follows: </P> <P> This Fox has a longing for grapes: He jumps, but the bunch still escapes . So he goes away sour; And,' tis said, to this hour Declares that he's no taste for grapes . </P> <P> By comparison, the Phaedrus version has six pentameter lines, of which two draw the moral, and Gabriele Faerno's Latin reworking has five lines and two more drawing the moral . Both Babrius and La Fontaine have eight, the latter using his final line to comment on the situation . Though the emblematist Geoffrey Whitney confines the story to four lines, he adds two more of personal application:' So thou, that hunt'st for that thou longe hast mist, / Still makes thy boast, thou maist if that thou list .' </P>

When was the fox and the grapes written