In an attempt to increase the quality of writing, I give you…
November 13th, 2007
MUTABILITY
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world’s delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.
II
Virtue, how frail it is!
Friendship how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.
III
Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou–and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.
1821 (1824)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
November 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Beautiful in prose, execution, and tempo, but… ultimately depressing.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:03 am
You think so? I’m writing a short paper on that very poem…which is why I posted it. I’m not sure it is entirely depressing…the crux of my argument is, essentially, that while the specific lines of the poem tend toward the depressing, the idea of mutability is such that, given time, all things will cycle back to the good.
I guess, in part, my theory comes from having read a lot more of Shelley’s stuff recently and I don’t see him as a pessimist. He certainly “felt” his emotions strongly. But he also took up a number of social/political causes. In that regard, then, I can’t really view anything he wrote as ultimately defeatist.
November 15th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Since I’ve never read (to my knowledge) anything else by the author, taking the poem all by itself… yeah, it is sort of depressing. It lacks hope. He builds things up and then ends with things like ‘tomorrow dies’ or ‘wakes to weep’. Not exactly something you’d want to read at a Christening or a wedding.
I get that mutability can cycle, but his changes ultimately lead to something negative rather than something hopeful or inspiring. It says a lot about how what we think, dream, and believe is always better than reality, which is true, but as an unchanging conclusion.
It’s that attitude that marks it depressing for me. You could argue that the last stanza advises to be thankful for what you have while you have it, but nothing in the poem suggests that you’re in control of what you feel and memories can be happy rather than longing.
I suppose what’s going on in the world right now sort of skews things for me. Thinking of a time when we didn’t have a billion dollar deficit, kids and the elderly giving up food and clothing for their medication, all the fighting and the nuclear talks, the pressure environmentally to do what we can to keep the planet from turning to a huge ball of slush garbage… It’s always going to be better in retrospect. My social studies teacher once asked us if we ever wondered why no one ever said the world was in a ‘Golden Age’ till after the fact.