We are but dust and shadow.

Truly, we are dust and shadow; truly, desire is blind and greedy; truly, hope deceives.

None to witness. Dust of dreams, dust of all that we never achieved. Dust of what we might have been and what we cannot help but be.

We are a blend of dust and divinity.

That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust.

Translation: Naught else but empty shadows are our dreams,
Reflected from the day’s imaginings.

Let’s return now to the dust as the dust we are

That we have first rais'd a Dust, and then complain, we cannot see.

I have never liked the phrase that says we’re just made of dust and return to dust. We are energy, which is interchangeable with light. We are fire and water and earth. We are air and atoms and quarks. Moreover, we are dreams, hopes, and fears held together by wisdom and driven apart by folly. So much more than dust. The biblical verse should say, “Miracle thou art and to Mystery returneth.

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar.

for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return

We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth.
What has no shadow has no strength to live

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial.