"Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and deforms:
And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream of their storms.
Still, as one swimming up stream, they strike out blind in the blast.
In thunders of vision and dream, and lightning of future and past.
We are baffled and caught in the current, and bruised upon edges of shoals;
As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken souls."
Algernon Charles Swinburne.