In following years, the bearded corn ensued From earth unasked, nor was that earth renewed. From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke, And honey sweating through the pores of oak.” Also Boethius, Book II Met. 5, and the Ode in Tasso’s Aminta , Leigh Hunt’s Tr. , beginning:⁠— “O lovely age of gold! Not that the rivers rolled With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew; Not that the ready ground Produced without a wound, Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew; Not that a cloudless blue Forever was in sight, Or that the heaven which burns, And now is cold by turns, Looked out in glad and everlasting light; No, nor that even the insolent ships from far Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse than war: “But solely that that vain And breath-invented pain, That idol of mistake, that worshipped cheat, That Honor⁠—since so called By vulgar minds appalled⁠— Played not the tyrant with our nature yet. It had not come to fret The sweet and happy fold Of gentle human-kind; Nor did its hard law bind Souls nursed in freedom; but that law of gold, That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted, Which Nature’s own hand wrote⁠—What pleases, is permitted.” Also Don Quixote’s address to the goatherds, Don Quixote , Book II Ch. 3, Jarvis’s Tr.