Any of you into romantic (the era, not the subject) poetry?
I'm having trouble with the first two lines of Coleridge's poem, "What is Life?"
"Resembles life what once was deem’d 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?"
I've got the rest down; I just can't figure out what the first line means.
Actually the second line means that [whatever the metaphoric light the first line mentions] is too bright for humans to (metaphorically) see properly or grasp.