Shelley's Mutability

The poet "Percy Bysshe Shelley was a radical nonconformist in every aspect of his life and thought" (698). He was a revolutionary in his time and, because of his radical ideas, became an outcast. Although he "envisioned himself as an alien and outcast, rejected by the human race to whose welfare he had dedicated his powers and his life" (699), he also seemed to thrive on this distinction. It was when he was "close to despair and knowing that he almost entirely lacked an audience that he wrote (what are now considered) his greatest works" (699). Although Shelley's short poem "Mutability" is not one his better known works, it is a good study into the art of the man. Barnhart dictionary defines the word mutability as that which has a tendency

In the first stanza, Shelley uses the image of "clouds that veil the midnight moon" to describe for the reader the way in which he begins to see "We," or all of us humans. He describes our actions; "How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, /Streaking the darkness radiantly!" Yet it is the conclusion of this stanza that begins to describe his meaning in this poem. He says; "yet soon /Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:" Shelley's imagery of the night's clouds is his representing for the reader the perhaps grandiose, but certainly short lives that we humans live here on earth. The second stanza of this poem also is a rich image or extended simile that Shelley draws upon to relate his point. In this stanza, Shelley sees again the "We" as "forgotten lyres [wind harps], 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." Here again Shelley describes using imagery the simple beauty that we humans can be or create, but also the frailty of our existence and how quickly we and the beauty we create are forgotten. Shelley's purpose however in these first two stanzas is to, using the power of imagery and simile, describe for the reader that we do not endure, but instead we after a short life are "lost for ever," and

Overall, "Mutability" has a somber, musing tone. It is as if you could imagine Shelley himself before you thinking out loud about the certainty of change in all things. The evidence of a musing tone is most clearly seen in the last two lines (lines fifteen and sixteen) of this poem; "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; /Nought may endure but Mutability." The use of the word 'may' here is almost ironic, for Shelley realizes that there is no may in the truth of his statement. He foolishly holds on to some hope that there 'may' be another way, yet he also realizes that there truly is not. The irony of this poem is also revealed in the first (line thirteen) and last (line sixteen) line of the last stanza as Shelley is coming to his conclusions; "It is the same-..." and "Nought may endure but Mutability." Shelley reveals for the reader the great irony in the truth that he has revealed. Nothing may endure but change. The whole thought itself is an irony. "It is the same" throughout history, we know no certainty but change. The depth and irony of this thought is brought to light very skillfully in this