What Is Life?

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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?

Published in 1829.