The ideas of the Emblematists respecting the goddess “Occasion” are also embodied by Shakespeare two or three times. Thus on receiving the evil tidings of his mother’s death and of the dauphin’s invasion, King John (act iv. sc. 2, l. 125, vol. iv, p. 65) exclaims,—
“Withhold thy speed, dreadful Occasion!
O make a league with me, till I have pleased
My discontented peers!”
In 2 Henry IV. (act iv. sc. 1, l. 70, vol. iv. p. 431) the Archbishop of York also says,—
“We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet there
By the rough torrent of occasion.”
Most beautiful too, and forcible are the stanzas on Occasion, or Opportunity from Lucrece (lines 869–882, vol. ix. p. 515),—
“Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;