NOTHING IS ENDLESS

 

                                                NOTHING IS ENDLESS

            This is a world of dualities. If here is life, there is also death. Darkness does not stay forever, it yields place to light. The sun not only rises, but also sets  in the evening. Night is the opposite of day. No story, no tale, no poem is without its end. Every season stays for a fixed time and not for eternity. Progress and regress, upward climbing and  downward descending,war and peace, happiness and sadness,  prosperity and poverty are not endless. They have their limited tenure. Every change that occurs is short-lived. The overall scenario of the world is always changing yielding place to the new.

           

            Given below is a poem titled This, Too, Shall Pass Away by Mrs. Lanta Wilson Smith (1856-1939) on the fleeting nature of events. Its central idea  is that “all earthly things ---both good and bad –are temporary.”

            It is not a pessimistic poem. On the other hand it emphasizes that difficult times in human life are impermanent.

            She is right because there is a silver lining in every cloud and dark nights are followed by bright mornings. Death, too, is succeeded by rebirth because  the human soul continues to survive in a new form.

                                    Here is the full text of Mrs. Smith’s poem.        

 WHEN SOME GREAT SORROW , like a mighty river,

Flows through your life with peace-destroying power,

And dearest things are swept from sight forever,

Say to your heart each trying hour:

" This, too, shall pass away. "

 

When ceaseless toil has hushed your song of gladness,

And you have grown almost too tired to pray,

Let this truth banish from your heart its sadness,

And ease the burdens of each trying day:

" This, too, shall pass away. "

 

When fortune smiles, and, full of mirth and pleasure,

The days are flitting by without a care,

Lest you should rest with only earthly treasure,

Let these few words their fullest import bear:

" This, too, shall pass away. "

 

When earnest labor brings you fame and glory,

And all earth's noblest ones upon you smile,

Remember that life's longest, grandest story

Fills but a moment in earth's little while:

" This, too, shall pass away. "

             

             Mrs. Smith, wrote more than five hundred poems, articles and hymns, dealing with faith, immortality, moral and spiritual subjects.

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G.R.Kanwal

2^nd May 2026