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| "Portrait of Shelley" Alfred Clint (1819) |
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:
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;
Nought may endure but
Mutability.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822). Early Poems (1814-1815) in
"Selected poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley", 1960. London:
Oxford University Press.
