“We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, 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 of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!”

“We rest; A dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; One wandering thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, 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 of departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but mutability!”

“We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soonNight closes round, and they are lost for ever;Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant stringsGive various response to each varying blast,To whose frail frame no second motion bringsOne 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, conceive 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 of its departure still is free:Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability.”

“As long as skies are blue, and fields are green Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow ”

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim”

“What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.”

“I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear,— Till death like sleep might steal on me And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”