Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.”
Less direct is the reference in the phrase from Troilus and Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 49, vol. vi. p. 143),—
“when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks.”
To the same purport are Cæsar’s words (Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3, l. 5, vol. vii. p. 334),—
“I have seen tempests, when the scolding wings