Poor water-drinkers sing an irksome tune,
Short-liv’d their numbers, and their airs jejune.
Ovid bewailed himself very bitterly for want of wine in his exile.
“Impetus ille sacer, qui vatum pectora nutrit
Qui prius in nobis esse solebat, abest.”[7a]
That sacred rage that feeds a poet’s breast,
Common to me, is now no more possest.
La Motte[8], my beloved Frenchman, has something not unlike it.
“Loin une raison trop timide
Les froids poetes qu’elle guide