Mutability

"Mutability" (p. 744) is one of Shelley's early philosophical poems, focusing on the concept of mutability, or change. Respond to/explicate this poem by relating the whole to the last line. Also, TRY to relate the verse--meter, lines, rhymes, even the punctuation--to the meaning.

Here we, the "we" to which the speaker identifies himself within is a general "we" in which the reader or listener is meant to include themselves within. It is meant to extend to all of mankind. We speed about through life, not questioning and all blending together, though we do often shine in our differences, we are still all a part of the same whole and fade into death all to easily, "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//Give various response to each varying blast" Not one person is quite like another, we all react different to what seems to be the same stimulus, person, or event. "To whose frail frame no second motion brings//One mood or modulation like the last." We will never react the same way twice either, no matter the circumstances. Humankind is utterly unpredictable.

One little thing can ruin out experiences. Whatever we do, this will always be so, "We rest.- A dream has power to poison sleep;//We rise.-One wandering thought pollutes the day" Each of us deals with this in different ways, "We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;//Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away"

It's difficult to tell how one person will take something as not only are we all different, we are always changing. That is the only thing that remains the same, "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;//Nought may endure but Mutability."

The points that the speaker calls attention to by way of his exclamation points and separations are interesting. "Streaking the darkness radiantly!" The clouds, which represented the "we" were doing this and it shows our lives beautiful and fast lived. "It is the same! -For be it joy or sorrow,//The path of its departure still is free" We're meant to know that though there are many differences described through this poem, we are still the same in that we live and are free to do so.