Mutability

The poem is a part of the lyric genre due to its small size and personal ideas. At the same time, the poem functions as a work of cultural commentary: It has a definable viewpoint on humans and the transitory aspects of them and their culture. The speaker identifies as a member of humanity and uses the plural pronoun “we” to speak for humans as a whole. In keeping with the central theme of the poem—mutability, as the title indicates—the speaker’s identity is unknown. Shelley gives the speaker neither a name nor a gender, and the poem provides no explicit personal information about the speaker. Yet the speaker is not a total mystery. Like Shelley, the speaker believes in the instability of human beings. The speaker is quite confident, too, as they’re comfortable speaking for all humankind.

Another detectable trait about the speaker is their mood. The speaker appears melancholy—that is, it’s like they’re inevitably sad or missing something. The palpable glum generates a melancholy tone from start to finish. The poem begins, “We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon” (Line 1). The comparison relies on a gloomy image. Clouds link to a downcast attitude because they cover the sun. The word “veil” links to loss as people wear mourning veils. The “midnight moon” qualifies as sad because it can allude to someone too upset to sleep, so they stare at the moon.

The tone pivots to exuberance, but the excitement is a decoy. It serves only to reinforce the dominant melancholy tone. The speaker describes humans/clouds and how “they speed and gleam and quiver” (Line 2), but the burst of energy doesn’t last: “Night closes round, and they are lost for ever” (Line 4). In this image, Night is an all-powerful foe that extinguishes the temporarily buoyant clouds/people.

After comparing humans to vanishing clouds, the speaker likens them to “forgotten lyres” (Line 5), which furthers the gloomy tone. The musical instrument doesn’t play pleasant music. It has “dissonant strings” and “[g]ives various response to each varying blast” (Line 6). The lyre isn’t harmonious; each time someone plays it, it’s likely to sound different. It has a “frail frame” and no “mood or modulation” is “like the last” (Line 8). The lyre is in a weak state and lacks the vigor to make a consistent sound. The loss of an agreeable melody is cause for sadness.

Dropping the comparisons, the speaker shifts into a series of declarative sentences. They share several observations about humans, and none are rosy. The speaker says, “We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep” (Line 9). Rest is a good thing, but rest can easily change into a bad thing. While resting—that is, sleeping—a person might have a dream that harms their peaceful slumber. The speaker notes the mutability of sleep and rest. It can start one way and then undergo an adverse change.

The second observation relates to a person’s waking hours. After resting, a person gets up and goes about their day. A person’s day might begin triumphantly—they “rise” (Line 10)—but, as with sleep, mutability threatens. While conscious, a person can change—“one wandering thought pollutes the day” (Line 10). It takes only a single stray idea to alter a person’s mood, outlook, or day.

The speaker then catalogs the number of things humans do. As the speaker lists these traits and actions, the poem briefly takes on the style of a list. The speaker says, “We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep, / Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away” (Lines 11-12). The list compromises juxtapositions. The speaker makes pairs out of two seemingly different things. People can “feel” emotions or they can rely on their intelligence and “conceive or reason” (Line 11). People can also choose to laugh or cry—to drown in their sorrows or kick their sadness to the curb.

The poem’s ironic tone manifests sharply when, about the list in Lines 11-12, the speaker declares, “It is the same!” (Line 13). Surprisingly, or ironically, the list doesn’t detail different human conditions. They are alike. Whether it’s “joy or sorrow, / The path of its departure still is free” (Lines 13-14). Whatever one is feeling or doing, it doesn’t matter because it will depart or change and become something else.

A person can go from weeping to laughing, laughing to weeping, feeling to thinking, thinking to feeling, and so on. Continuity is an allusion: “Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow” (Line 15). What a person feels and thinks will change over the next 24 hours. Only one thing “may endure,” and that’s “Mutability” (Line 16). The last line adds significant irony to the poem because the dominant authority isn’t strong and unshakable but elusive and indefinable. Unexpectedly, the speaker turns fickleness into a tyrant.

The audience for this poem is humanity, and the message serves as a warning, which circles back to the cultural commentary genre. The poem makes an argument—human beings are volatile and unreliable—and communicates its unsettling thesis through a melancholy tone. Humans should get used to sadness and losing things—it’s a central part of their nature. While the speaker identifies with humankind, in the end, the “we” is suspicious. If the speaker was a regular member of humanity, then they’d probably be listening to this poem and not writing it. The singular outlook indicates the speaker is unique and not a common member of the human race.