Percy Bysshe Shelley 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;       Nought may endure but Mutability. 1816