John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
4517 William Cowper 1731-1800 John Bartlett
| NUMBER: | 4517 |
| AUTHOR: | William Cowper (1731–1800) |
| QUOTATION: | From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up. 1 |
| ATTRIBUTION: | The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 188. |
| Note 1. He has spent all his life in letting down buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.—Lady Holland’s Memoir of Sydney Smith, vol. i. p. 259. [back] |