The Cock and the Pearl

A cock was once strutting up and down the farmyard
among the hens when suddenly he espied something
shinning amid the straw. ‘Ho! ho!’ quoth he, ‘that’s for
me,’ and soon rooted it out from beneath the straw. What
did it turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance had
been lost in the yard? ‘You may be a treasure,’ quoth
Master Cock, ‘to men that prize you, but for me I would
rather have a single barley-corn than a peck of pearls.’
Precious things are for those that can prize them