All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair— The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—[447:2] 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.

FOOTNOTES:

LINENOTES:

Title] Lines composed on a day in February. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. Bijou: Lines composed on the 21st of February, 1827 1828, 1829, 1834.

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Slugs] Snails erased MS. S. T. C.: Stags 1828, 1829, 1885.

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With unmoist lip and wreathless brow I stroll With lips unmoisten'd wreathless brow I stroll MS. S. T. C.

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · First printed in the Bijou for 1828: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. These lines, as published in the Bijou for 1828, were an excerpt from Note 2 · Compare the last stanza of George Herbert's Praise:— O raise me thus! Poor Bees that work all day, Sting my delay, Who have a work as well a

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