The Path is Not Always Straight, Nor Clear

The Path is Not Always Straight, Nor Clear, originally uploaded by skitbraviking.

This is for the friend who is sad because even sadness has an end.


"Mutability"

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Steaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose radiant dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, concieve or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path to its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

—Percy Bysshe Shelly