(3) Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may;
For me ye bloom not. Glide, rich streams, away!
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.
Shakespeare, in the citation “She never told her love,” gives out his subject in five words; from this he rises into the amplification of it through an exquisite metaphor and thence inters its divine ideal in imagery that can never be surpassed. Such is the working principle in imaginative verse, and it may be readily found that the principle does not pervade narrative poetry except in authors of the very highest class. It is the sure test of genius, so sure that a classification of the poets, in the order of their merit, might be based upon it.
It may be perceived that these poetic gems are as perfect in themselves as any epic of many pages. But as gems differ, so do these: the citations from Shakespeare and from Coleridge have their parallels in the line of ascent; they rise into their climax. The question whether the expression “slugs leave their lair,” should not be “stags leave their lair,” might surely be decided by reference to the first edition of “Work without Hope.” I possessed Gagliani’s reprint of Coleridge in 1832; if “slugs” in that issue stood as a printer’s error, the author was alive to protest against it. However, in an early edition of his poems, edited by Coleridge, I find it is “stags.” I feel that it was consonant with Coleridge’s mind to have begun the poem with “Slugs leave their lair;” it is not only more musical than “stags” through the triple alliteration, but more orderly, beginning with the slowest of animated creatures as typical of the condition of apathy that he was himself consigned to.