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;
                 Naught may endure but Mutability.


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