Work Without Hope
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

English romantic poet, philosopher and critic. His works include Poems on Various Subjects (1796), Lyrical Ballads (1798) written with Wordsworth and which includes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, conversation poems Fears in Solitude, Frost at Midnight, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Nightingale and the "dream" poem Kubla Khan (1797-8). His love poems include Love (1799); Dejection: an Ode (1902) was about his addiction to opium. Sibylline Leaves (1817) was the first of his collected works. His major work the Biographia Literaria was written after his rediscovery of Christianity and Aids to Reflection (1825) and Church and State (1830) are religious prose. Along with Wordsworth, Coleridge was one of the founders of the Romantic movement. Other romantic poets include Byron, Keats, Burns and Wordsworth.

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Work Without Hope
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lines composed 21st February, 1825

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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Work Without Hope by Samuel Taylor Coleridge