by Coleridge · Cluster: Flowers · Spring · Garden
Abstract
A sonnet contrasting busy springtime Nature with the poet, ‘the sole unbusy thing’, concluding that work without hope draws nectar in a sieve. Themes: despair, creative sterility, transience, melancholy.
Connections
Motifs: Nature, Spring, Winter, Flowers Themes & Concepts: Melancholy, Creative Sterility, Disillusionment, Alienation Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
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, 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.