Regarding Coleridge, I loved the Ancient Mariner; it has always been a favorite of mine. For this blog, however, I wanted to focus on another lesser known poem in the text. "Work without Hope," seems to me to be a great departure from most of the Romantic poems we have read so far. In it, the speaker is a depressed figure, who sees all around him the workings of a new Spring, bees, slugs, and birds leaving their lairs, but being that he is stuck in his depression, or in Winter, is unable to appreciate the beauty growing around him. He contrasts the busy-ness of Nature around him to his own unproductiveness: "And I, the sole unbusy thing, nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing." He is unable to glorify Nature because it reminds him of the stagnancy of his own life--"Bloom, O ye aramanths...for me ye bloom not." The text also mentions that aramanths are an unfading flower, so it seems Coleridge is focusing on his own fading nature, which again, takes him out of the traditional understanding of Nature, as he is disregarding his inner life, which is also unfading.
He is brooding over his attitude of hopelesness, "with lips unbrightened, wreathless brow I stroll." A wreath is usually a symbol of power, so he is lamenting his life as a failure; he addresses the streams in a melancholy query, "Would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?", as if he believes even Nature could not remain so hopeful if it were to experience whatever it is that makes him so hopeless. He ends by saying that just as it is impossible to "draw nectar in a seive," you can't work without hope because hope has to have some place to go or work out to survive.