“Mutability” Introduction

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“Mutability” Summary

“Mutability” Themes

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  Change and Emotion

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mutability”

• Lines 1-4

  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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 5-8

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-10

  We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
      We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 11-14

  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;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 15-16

  Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
      Nought may endure but Mutability.

  

  

  

  

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“Mutability” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Simile

  

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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• Imagery

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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• Paradox

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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“Mutability” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Radiantly
• Lyres
• Dissonant
• Blast
• Frail
• Modulation
• Conceive
• Fond
• Woe
• Ne'er
• Morrow
• Nought
• Mutability

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mutability”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Mutability” Speaker

“Mutability” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Mutability”

More “Mutability” Resources

• External Resources

  • A Short Biography — Visit the British Library's website to learn more about Shelley's turbulent life.

  • The Poem's Composition — Learn more about the circumstances in which Shelley wrote this poem (and his collaboration with his wife Mary, herself an important writer).

  • The Keats-Shelley Museum — Visit the website of the Keats-Shelley Museum to learn more about Shelley's life and times (and how he fits into the wider Romantic movement).

  • Shelley's Legend — Take a look at an 1889 painting of Shelley's cremation—a dramatic image that reflects Shelley's role as a quintessential Romantic poet.

  • Shelley's Influence — Read biographer Richard Holmes's essay on Shelley's literary legacy.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • England in 1819

  • Love’s Philosophy

  • Music, When Soft Voices Die

  • Ode to the West Wind

  • Ozymandias

  • Song to the Men of England

  • Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples

  • The Question

  • To a Skylark