(1) All nature seems at work:
(2) Slugs leave their lair;
The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,
(3) And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
(1) And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
(2) 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.
(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.