Steve W >> I find the opening trope (bee = worker) to be very tired. Then it goes on in its rural idyll way, with its message at the end of the poem of hope against hope, and I think, how many times have I been here? <<
I don't think the "worker" at the outset involves a trope -- it's a simple reference to a worker bee. And I don't get any message of "hope against hope" at the end. . . .
>> They're spared the sad mirth serving those who gauge
The gap between the longed-for and the real,
Who grasp provisional joy, who must not be
Desolate, however desolate they feel. <<
The graspers of provisional joy might be said to entertain "hope against hope", but the poem is not endorsing their position or presenting that as a message. I think the poem avoids any obvious message. The issues it deals with are certainly not original but it arrives at them through original perceptions (as opposed to clever rephrasings) and achieves a quite fresh and poignant philosophical suggestiveness, or so it seems to me.
Two things do bother me about the poem, though: the repetition of "settles" in the first two lines (I would be inclined to substitute "hovers" in the first line), and the unidiomatic "a regret / Of" (presumably meaning "a regret about").
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