La terre et l’air, qui la soulaient nourrir,
La quittent lors et la laissent flétrir[498].”
It is evident that Ariosto has suggested several things to the French poet, as he has also done to the imitators in our own language, in which the simile has been frequently attempted, but not with much success. Ben Jonson has translated it miserably, substituting doggerel verse for the sweet flow of the Latin poetry, and verbal antithesis and conceit for that beautiful simplicity of idea which forms the chief charm of the original:
“Look how a flower that close in closes grows,
Hid from rude cattle, bruised by no plows,” &c.
One of the best of the numerous English imitations is that in the Lay of Iolante, introduced in Bland’s Four Slaves of Cythera:
“A tender maid is like a flow’ret sweet,
Within the covert of a garden born;
Nor flock nor hind disturb the calm retreat,
But on the parent stalk it blooms untorn,