And divers colored trees and fresh array [hair]
Much grace the town [head], but most the Thelu gay;
But all in winter [old age] turn to snow and soon decay.
Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island, v. (1633).
Thenot, an old shepherd bent with age, who tells Cuddy, the herdsman’s boy, the fable of the oak and the briar. An aged oak, once a most royal tree, was wasted by age of its foliage, and stood with bare head and sear branches. A pert bramble grew hard by, and snubbed the oak, calling it a cumberer of the ground. It even complained to the lord of the field, and prayed him to cut it down. The request was obeyed, and the oak was felled; but now the bramble suffered from the storm and cold, for it had no shelter, and the snow bent it to the ground, where it was draggled and defiled. The application is very personal. Cuddy is the pert, flippant bramble, and Thenot the hoary oak; but Cuddy told the old man his tale was long and trashy, and bad him hie home, for the sun was set.--Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar, ii. (1579).
(Thenot is introduced also in ecl. iv., and again in ecl. xi., where he begs Colin to sing something, but Colin declines because his mind is sorrowing for the death of the shepherdess Dido.)
Thenot, a shepherd who loved Clorin chiefly for her “fidelity” to her deceased lover. When the “faithful shepherdess” knew this, in order to cure him of his passion, she pretended to return his love. Thenot was so shocked to see his charm broken that he lost even his respect for Clorin, and forsook her.--John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (1610).
Theocritus, of Syracuse, in Sicily (fl. B.C. 280), celebrated for his idylls in Doric Greek. Meli is the person referred to below.
Behold once more,
The pitying gods to earth restore