19 pages • 38 minutes read
Percy Bysshe ShelleyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The poem’s title, “Mutability,” reveals its pressing theme—change, or more specifically, the unpredictability of human nature. Mutability means liable to change, and Shelley’s poem centers on how human nature is invariably in flux. In the first two stanzas, Shelley confronts the theme of change through similes. First, he compares humans to clouds. The clouds “speed and gleam and quiver” (Line 2). After night comes, “they are lost for ever” (Line 4). He then compares humans to “forgotten lyres” (Line 5). The feeble musical instrument is unreliable and makes a different sound each time someone plays it. Humans are like lyres and clouds because their feelings, thoughts, and bodies come and go, and they are liable to do something dissimilar each encounter.
In Stanza 3, Shelley highlights the theme of change through direct declarations about the human experience. A person’s rest can transform into trouble due to a bad dream. Awake, a person’s “wandering thought” (Line 10) might change their day from good to bad. The list of human behaviors in Lines 11-12 is volatile and furthers the theme that human nature revolves around change. Whatever a person feels, thinks, or does, “its departure still is free” (Line 14). That is, nothing is preventing the emotion or thought from going away.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry
A Defence of Poetry
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Adonais
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode to the West Wind
Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prometheus Unbound
Prometheus Unbound
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Queen Mab
Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Masque of Anarchy
The Masque of Anarchy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Triumph of Life
The Triumph of Life
Percy Bysshe Shelley
To a Skylark
To a Skylark
Percy Bysshe Shelley
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection