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Or as the sweet Papinius again;
--Nemorum vos stirpe rigenti
Fama satos, cum prima pedum vestigia tellus
Admirata tulit, nondum arva, dom&sque ferebantCruda puerperia, ac populos umbrosa creavitFraxinus, et feta viridis puer excidit Orno:
Hi Iucis slupuifse vices, noctisque ferunturNubila, et occiduum Ionge Titana secutiDesperafse diem-
Fame goes, that ye brake forth from the hard rind,When the new earth with the first feel was sign’d;Fields yet nor houses doleful pangs reliev’d,
But shady Ash the num’rous births receiv’d,
And the green babe dropp’d from the pregnant Elm,Whom strange amazement first did overwhelmAt break of day, and when the gloomy nightRavish’d the sun from their pursuing sight,
They gave the day for lost-
Almost like that which Rinaldo saw in the enchanted forest :
Quercia gli appar, che per se stefsa incisaApre feconda il cavo ventre, e figlia;
E n’esce fuor vestita in strania guisa
Ninfa d’eta cresciuta-
canto 18 .
A lab’ring Oak a sudden cleft disclos’d,And from its bark a living birth expos’d;Where (pafsing all belief) in strange array,A lovely damsel ifsu’d to the day.
And that every great tree included a certain tutelar genius or nymph,living and dying with it, the Poets are full; a special instance we have inthat prodigious Oak which fell by the fatal stroke of Erisichthon ; but theHamadryads, it seems, were immortal, and had power to remove andchange their wooden habitations.
In the mean while, as the fall of a very aged Oak, giving a crack likethunder, has often been heard at many miles distance, (constrained thoughI often am to fell them with reluctancy,) I do not at any time rememberto have heard the groans of those .nymphs (grieving to be dispofsefsed of
Voltime II.