Have rived the knotty oaks.”
In Love’s Labour’s Lost (act iv. sc. 2, l. 100, vol. ii. p. 138), the Canzonet, which Nathaniel reads, recognises the fable itself,—
“If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?
Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow’d!
Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove;
Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bow’d.”
We have, too, in Coriolanus (act v. sc. 2, l. 102, vol. vi. p. 403) the lines, “The worthy fellow is our general: He is the rock; the oak not to be wind shaken.”
This phrase is to be exampled from Otho Vænius (p. 116), where occur the English motto and stanza, “Strengthened by trauaile,”—
“Eu’n as the stately oke whome forcefull wyndes do moue,
Doth fasten more his root the more the tempest blowes,