Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What Is Life?
- 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 ?
1805, published 1829
(proofed against E. H. Coleridge's 1927 edition of STC's
poems)
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