19 pages 38 minutes read

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mutability

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Themes

Change and Human Nature

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.

Related Titles

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

A Defence of Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Defence of Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Adonais

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Adonais

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Mont Blanc

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Plot Summary

logo

Prometheus Unbound

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Prometheus Unbound

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

Queen Mab

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

The Masque of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Masque of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

The Triumph of Life

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Triumph of Life

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Study Guide

logo

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley