"When eyes upon Reynard he set, as now in the ring he appeared,
With body clean shaven and smooth, and over and over bedaubed
With oil and perfidious fat, with laughter the king was convulsed.
You fox, who that has you taught? he exclaimed.
With justice, indeed,
You Reynard, the Fox, may be called; a trickster incessant you are.
Some hole you in all places know, and how to make use of it too."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Reynard the Fox, Canto Twelve
The Works of J.W. von Goethe, Vol. X--Poems of Goethe Vol. II--Reynard the Fox, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is part of a 14-volume set originally published in 1901-1902. Reynard the Fox (1794) is a poem in hexameters, in twelve parts, based on the medieval fables about the red fox, a trickster figure.