Hope, art thou true, or dost thou flatter me?

Doth Stella now begin with piteous eye

The ruins of her conquest to espy:
Will she take time, before all wracked be?
Her eyes’ speech is translated thus by thee:
But fail’st thou not in phrase so heav’nly high?
Look on again, the fair text better try:
What blushing notes dost thou in margin see?

In this sonnet, from the first substantial sonnet sequence written in English, ‘Astrophil’ (i.e. Sir
Philip Sidney) hopes that ‘Stella’ (i.e. Lady Penelope Rich) might take pity on him, and return
the love he bears her.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Work without Hope’.

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 …

What is work without hope? Or hope without putting the work in? As Coleridge (1772-1834)
writes here, ‘Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, / And Hope without an object cannot
live.’ Composed on 21 February 1825, this late Coleridge poem looks like a sonnet – it has 14
lines – but its rhyme scheme doesn’t resemble any recognisable sonnet form.