He recognised contrasts of this kind both in the animate and the inanimate creation, and not least where the birds are involved:
Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;
Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;
The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing,
What virtue breeds iniquity devours.[40]
He makes the Bishop of Ely account for the reformation of the Prince of Wales by calling attention to the association in Nature of what is baneful with what is profitable.
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality:
And so the Prince obscured his contemplation