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 soon
⁠Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings 5
⁠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;10
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^[1] ne'er be like his morrow;15
⁠Nought 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).