The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Mutability

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

For works with similar titles, see Mutability.

MUTABILITY

[Published with Alastor, 1816.]

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 strings 5Give 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;10We 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^[1] ne'er be like his morrow;15Nought may endure but^[2] Mutability.

1. may 1816; can Lodore, chap. xlix, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).
2. Nought may endure but 1816; Nor aught endure save Lodore, chap. xlix, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).