From the Latin of Marc Antony Flaminius, sixteenth century.


As a fragile and lovely flower unfolds its gleaming
        foliage on the breast of the fostering earth, if
        the dew and the rain draw it forth;
So doth my tender mind flourish, if it be fed with the
        sweet dew of the fostering spirit,
Lacking this, it beginneth straightway to languish,
        even as a floweret born upon dry earth, if the
        dew and the rain tend it not.