"Shall, Antipholus,
Even in the spring of love thy _love-springs_ rot?"
_Com. of Errors_, Act III. Sc. 2.
and in "Time's Glory"--
"To dry the old oak's sap and cherish _springs_."
_Rape of Lucrece._
_Spring_ afterwards came to be used for underwood, &c. Perhaps it answered
to the present _coppice_, which is composed of the springs or shoots of the
growth which has been cut down:
"The lofty high wood and the lower _spring_."
Drayton's _Muses' Elysium_, 10.
"The lesser birds that keep the lower _spring_."
_Id._, note.
It was also used as equivalent to grove:
"Unless it were
The nightingale among the thick-leaved _spring_."
Fletcher's _Faith. Shep._, v. 1.
where, however, it may be the coppice.
"This hand Sibylla's golden boughs to guard them,
Through hell and horror, to the Elysian _springs_."
Massinger's _Bondman_, ii. 1.
In the following place Fairfax uses _spring_ to express the "salvatichi
soggiorni," i. e. _selva_ of his original:
"But if his courage any champion move
Too try the hazard of this dreadful _spring_."
_Godf. of Bull._, xiii. 31.
and in
"For you alone to happy end must bring
The strong enchantments of the charmed _spring_."
_Id._, xviii. 2.
it answers to _selva_.