What Is Life?

A poem 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?