I am having a hard time understanding this poem. I need to reveiw it and cannot figure it out. Any help?

thanks

Work Without Hope
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.


In the first stanza, he's talking about springtime- everything is busy except him. In the second, he talks about why he's not busy- he's depressed and without hope. (Drawing nectar in a sieve means trying to scoop up liquid- it will all run out, and be a futile attempt).

pam

[www.orgs.muohio.edu]

Sort of a upside down sonnet, eh? Six lines followed by eight. Rhymes ababbb then couplets to finish.

The birds on the wing proves he read the Rubaiyat I would think.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and lo! the Bird is on the Wing.