“Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,
With too much spirit to be e'er at ease,
With too much quickness ever to be taught,
With too much thinking to have common thought:
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.”
More from Alexander Pope
“Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged…”
“Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had…”
“Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd. Hide…”
“All forms that perish other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath and die)…”