Mutability
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Mutability” first appeared in his 1816 collection “Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude”. Half of the poem is quoted, uncredited, in his wife Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein”. A later poem by Shelley is also sometimes published under the same title, not to be confused with this one.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 in Warnham, West Sussex, England, and he died on 8 July 1822 in Gulf of La Spezia, Kingdom of Sardinia (now Italy), at the age of 29.A poet, dramatist, and essayist, Shelley was a radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views. He did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets.
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We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly! — yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: —
Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One 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.