| Work
Without Hope |
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|
by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
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| 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, | 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. | |
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| Nor — neither | |
| object — something to hope for, an objective | |