Self-Knowledge

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Title:     Self-Knowledge
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [More Titles by Coleridge]

--E coelo descendit +gnôthi seauton+.--JUVENAL, xi. 27.

+Gnôthi seauton!+--and is this the prime
And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time!--
Say, canst thou make thyself?--Learn first that trade;--
Haply thou mayst know what thyself had made.
What hast thou, Man, that thou dar'st call thine own?--
What is there in thee, Man, that can be known?--
Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought,
A phantom dim of past and future wrought,
Vain sister of the worm,--life, death, soul, clod--
Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!

1832.

[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: Self-Knowledge

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