Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Oak
Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with.
Cowper.—Yardley Oak, Line 17.
The oak, when living, monarch of the wood;
The English oak which, dead, commands the flood.
Churchill.—Gotham, Book I. Line 303.
A sturdy oak, which nature forms
To brave a hundred winters’ storms,
While round its head the whirlwinds blow,
Remains with root infix’d below:
When fell’d to earth, a ship it sails
Through dashing waves and driving gales
And now at sea, again defies
The threat’ning clouds and howling skies.
Hoole’s Metastatio, Adrian in Syria, Act I. Scene 3.
The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees:
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state; and in three more decays.
Dryden.—Palamon and Arcite, Line 1058.