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Work Without Hope by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Analysis

"Work Without Hope" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge speaks of nature yet compares it to himself. He talks about how winter has the hope of spring and how everything must have hope to continue to work.

This poem is written as two short paragraphs--the first has six lines and the second has eight. It is rhymed as ABABBB-CCDDEEFF. It is also written in iambic pentameter. This is an Italian Sonnet.

Poem

Work Without Hope
By 

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -
The bees are stirring -birds are on the wing -
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
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!
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.
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