Thy vain enquiry can at length but find
A blast of murm’ring wind:
It is a cask, that seems, as full as fair,
But merely tunn’d with air;
Fond youth, go build thy hopes on better grounds:
The soul that vainly sounds
Her joys upon this world, but feeds on empty sounds!
Emb. 10. Book II.
But that you may not think the good passages of this poet are only scattered unequally through his poems; take some entire ones—or nearly so.
What sullen star rul’d my untimely birth,