Human Life Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Human Life

Rating: 2.9


If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being ! If the breath
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death ;
O Man ! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
Blank accident ! nothing's anomaly !
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights !--Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create
And to repay the other ! Why rejoices
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good ?
Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood ?
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold ?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self ?
Be sad ! be glad ! be neither ! seek, or shun !
Thou hast no reason why ! Thou canst have none ;
Thy being's being is contradiction.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Susan Williams 25 February 2016

I could not enjoy life as something meaningless- - - - - - -Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun! Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none; Thy being's being is contradiction.

19 0 Reply
Ramesh T A 25 February 2016

Human life is indeed a big contradiction according to S T Coleridge! Rejoicing or loathing in life cannot change death if our life is brief or big in this world that even Milton knew pretty well! Ah! What a bold exposition about human life in this ephemeral world!

4 1 Reply
Richy Alzy 25 February 2016

..Thy being's being is contradiction. Often times we seem to wonder the true purpose of our existence. If death could but have no effect on us, would life still be of value? This I keep pondering every now and then. Great work Sire!

3 2 Reply
Uzefa Rashida M.a 25 February 2016

Life and death both are contradictory and exist only in the absence of the other.

3 0 Reply
John Ugolo Umah 25 February 2016

Indeed we are seized by death. Very nice ink.

3 0 Reply
Dr Lakshmi S Bose 15 October 2019

nice one, beautifully written

1 0 Reply
Ty kun 05 August 2019

This is a reductio ad absurdum against those who deny the immortality of the soul. There is nothing bleak or nihilistic about this poem. This is the perfect marriage of verse and logos.

3 0 Reply
KEERTHY 02 July 2018

VERY GOOD POE.MY APPLASEAND LOVE TO YOU

2 1 Reply
Chalo John 30 June 2016

It is true that life is meaningless even though we forget that.

5 4 Reply
Peter Cheyne 02 March 2016

Instead of reading this poem as kind advice to a likeminded other, try reading it as Coleridge––who did not believe that once 'dead, we cease to be'––attempting to persuade an atheist that human life is indeed meaningful, and that our life is not 'Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! ' Those who believe, however, that human life is merely 'Blank accident', have no reason by their own premises, Coleridge is arguing, to be sad––or glad.

8 3 Reply
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