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.     NOTES:     _15 may 1816; can Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).     _16 Nought may endure but 1816;         Nor aught endure save Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).