Ma laſſo (io’lsò) rimedio ne ſoccorſo
All’ amoroſo colpo alcun non vale.
Eſto tiene ſu remedio, y non yo.
“The smitten stag hath found sad pains to feel,
No trusted Cretan dittany[[168]] is near,
Wearied, for succour there is only fear,—
The wounds of love no remedy can heal.”
To the same motto and the same device Paradin (fol. 168) furnishes an explanation,—
“The device of love incurable,” he says, “may be a stag wounded by an arrow, having a branch of Dittany in its mouth, which is a herb that grows abundantly in the island of Crete. By eating this the wounded stag heals all its injuries. The motto, ‘Esto tienne su remedio, y no yo,’ follows those verses of Ovid in the Metamorphoses, where Phœbus, complaining of the love for Daphne, says, ‘Hei mihi, quòd nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.’”
The connected lines in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (bk. i. fab. 9), show that even Apollo, the god of healing, whose skill does good to all others, does no good to himself. The Emblems of Otho Vænius (p. 154) gives a very similar account to that of Symeoni,—