Mutability
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;
Naught may endure but Mutability.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A poem I discovered in high school, not in our textbooks but a college literature anthology that had come down to me from my uncle or aunt, through my grandmother and a mysterious trunk in her attic. It was my favorite, and seems to be relatively obscure.
On Turning 79 in 2025
-
Top of Trinidad Head June 30, 2025. My climb dedicated to my friend Mike
and to the
memory of Jim Harrison
On one of his birthdays, writer Jim Harrison po...
22 hours ago
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