[446:1] A coast village near Ramsgate. Coleridge passed some weeks at Ramsgate in the late autumn of 1824.
WORK WITHOUT HOPE[447:1]
LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY 1825
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—[447:2]
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, 5
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! [10]
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.
1825.
FOOTNOTES:
[447:1] First printed in the Bijou for 1828: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. These lines, as published in the Bijou for 1828, were an excerpt from an entry in a notebook, dated Feb. 21, 1825. They were preceded by a prose introduction, now for the first time printed, and followed by a metrical interpretation or afterthought which was first published in the Notes to the Edition of 1893. For an exact reproduction of the prose and verse as they appear in the notebook, vide [Appendices] of this edition.