It seems to me a barren thing this Conservatismöan unhappy cross-breed, the mule of politics that engenders nothing.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Coningsby, bk.3, ch.5.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.Your still fowl, blinking at youwithout remark, mayall thewhilebesittingonone addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  Felix Holt, ch.15.

Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.

-Pope, Alexander
  Epistles to Several Persons,'To a Lady', l.71^2.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry,'tis all barren.

-Sterne, Laurence
  A SentimentalJourney,'In the Street. Calais'.

Be she barren, be she old, Be she slut, or be she scold, Eat my oysters, and lie near her, She'll be fruitful, never fear her.

-Swift,Jonathan
  'Verses Made for theWomenWho Cry Oysters'.

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

-Swinburne, Algernon Charles
  Poems and Ballads,'Dolores', stanza 20.