Alas! must it ever be so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?

Bulwer-Lytton’s lines lament a recurring human pattern: we often obstruct our own happiness and progress. The image of “standing in our own light” suggests self-sabotage—blocking the very illumination (clarity, opportunity, self-knowledge) that could guide us. “Fight our own shadows” extends the metaphor: the adversary is not an external foe but the darker projections of the self—fear, pride, guilt, unresolved desires—following us wherever we go. The rhetorical question (“must it ever be so?”) frames this as both a personal complaint and a general diagnosis of human nature, implying that inner conflict is portable and persistent unless consciously confronted.