What is Life?

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Original Language English

     Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
     Too ample in itself for human sight?
An absolute Self -- an element ungrounded --
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
     By encroach of darkness made?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death?

-- from The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge / Edited by William Keach

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What is Life?