Panchatantra: The Lion and the Ram

From The Panchatantra of Vishnu Sharma, translated by Arthur W. Ryder (1925).

The Lion and the Ram

[This story is inserted into The Plover Who Fought the Ocean.]

In a part of a forest was a ram, separated from his flock. In the armour of his great fleece and horns, he roamed the wood, a tough customer. Now one day a lion in that forest, who had a retinue of all kinds of animals, encountered him. At this unprecedented sight, since the wool so bristled in every direction as to conceal the body, the lion's [160} heart was troubled and invaded by fear. "Surely, he is more powerful than I am," thought he. "That is why he wanders here so fearlessly."
And the lion edged away. But on a later day the lion saw the same ram cropping grass on the forest floor, and he thought: "What! The fellow nibbles grass! His strength must be in relation to his diet."
So he made a quick spring and killed the ram.
"And that is why I say:
The poor are in peculiar need
Of being secret when they feed:
The lion killed the ram who could
Not check his appetite for food."