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MUTABILITY. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

Edition used:

Posthumous Poems (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824).

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MUTABILITY.

    • The flower that smiles to-day
    • To-morrow dies;
    • All that we wish to stay,
    • Tempts and then flies;
    • What is this world’s delight?
    • Lightning that mocks the night,
    • Brief even as bright.
    • Virtue, how frail it is!
    • Friendship too rare!
    • Love, how it sells poor bliss
    • For proud despair!
    • But we, though soon they fall,
    • Survive their joy and all
    • Which ours we call.
    • Whilst skies are blue and bright,
    • Whilst flowers are gay,
    • Whilst eyes that change ere night
    • Make glad the day;
    • Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
    • Dream thou—and from thy sleep
    • Then wake to weep.