Thursday 29 June 2017

A Poem for When Everything Changes and Does Your Head In!

Copyright Janet Cameron


One thing is for sure, everything changes. Shelley knew this and right now, I need this poem!


MUTABILITY by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 forever:

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.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, I have always thought of this as a very perceptive composition and it expresses quite succinctly the indelible fact of change of with which we are all confronted as the years roll by. A neat and tidy little construction from PBS. The pity is that most people realise the truth of what he is saying (and I also think that poetry is the best way of expressing it) but could not say it as well.

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  2. * Erratum : 'fact of change BY which we are all confronted'.

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