Literature/Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mutability
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1816
Shelley’s poem likening human beings to passing clouds and forgotten lyres, and declaring that nothing endures but change.
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soonNight closes round, and they are lost for ever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant stringsGive various response to each varying blast,To whose frail frame no second motion bringsOne mood or modulation like the last.
We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep:We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free:Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability.