Even This Shall Pass Away

Even This Shall Pass Away

We use this statement whenever we face sorrow, sufferings or pain. Though I never understood fully how can sorrow pass away but happiness stay. The thought seems inherently fallacious & tops the list of things that disturbs me often.

I was a small kid when my mother told me to study hard for 10 days in exam & then I will have vacations. I was jubilant, I worked very hard as exams were somethings made to make me suffer. They were the price I needed to pay to get my vacations, my share of happiness.

It was first day of my vacations. I was at top of the world but so disappointingly last day came & I was forced to think If exams the evil, the suffering; is short lived & the vacations, the happiness; is permanent? Then I came to realize happiness or sorrow, pain or joy will come & go, what will be important for me & all of us is to enjoy them equally. I got this fact fairely early, but I guess people knew it earlier than me & possibly few will never got it right!!! Let me show you how?

ONCE in Persia ruled a king,

Who upon his signet ring

’Graved a motto true and wise,

Which, when held before his eyes,

Gave him counsel at a glance

Fit for any change or chance.

Solemn words, and these were they:

“Even this shall pass away.”

Trains of camel through the sand
Brought him gems from Samarkand;

Fleets of galleys through the seas

Brought him pearls to rival these.

Yet he counted little gain

Treasures of the mine or main.

"What is wealth?" the king would say;

Even this shall pass away.”

’Mid the revels of his court,

In the zenith of his sport,

When the palms of all his guests,

Burned with clapping at his jests,

He, amid his figs and wine,

Cried: “Oh, precious friends of mine,

Pleasure comes, but not to stay;

Even this shall pass away.”

Lady, fairest ever seen,

Was the bride he crowned his queen.

Pillowed on his marriage bed

Softly to his soul he said:

“Though no bridegroom ever pressed

Fairer bosom to his breast,

Mortal flesh must come to clay

Even this shall pass away.”

Fighting in a furious field,

Once a javelin pierced his shield,

Soldiers with a loud lament

Bore him bleeding to his tent.

Groaning, from his wounded side,

“Pain is hard to bear,” he cried.

“But, with patience, day by day,

Even this shall pass away.”

Towering in the public square,

Twenty cubits in the air,

Rose his status grand in stone;

And the king, disguised, unknown,

Gazing on his sculptured name,

Asked himself: “And what is fame?

Fame is but a slow decay

Even this shall pass away.”

Struck with palsy, sere and old,

Standing at the gates of gold,

Spake him this, in dying breath:

“Life is done, and what is death?”

Then, in answer to the king,

Fell a sunbeam on the ring,

Answering, with its heavenly ray:

“Even death shall pass away.”

THEODORE TILTON.