“Mutability” and “A Defence of Poetry” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 1

Which statements best describe how "Mutability” reflects the idea in this excerpt? Select 2 options.

Revolt · Accepted Answer

A: It is a poem about life and human nature.; C: It uses images to express universal truths about life.

Question 2

In "A Defence of Poetry,” Shelley suggests that thoughts and feelings in life are "always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden.” Which lines from "Mutability” also reflect the idea that life is fleeting?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

A: We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver

Question 3

inferiorsuperiorequalsimilar

Revolt · Accepted Answer

B: superior

Question 4

Read the passages."A Defence of Poetry”Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind."Mutability”We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soonNight closes round, and they are lost for everHow does the first stanza of "Mutability” reflect the idea expressed in this excerpt from "A Defence of Poetry”?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

C: It demonstrates poetry’s ability to “arrest the vanishing apparitions” of life by preserving an image of a fleeting moment in time.

Question 5

Bruno’s teacher challenged his class to create their own line of poetry to add after the final stanza of "Mutability”: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.

Revolt · Accepted Answer

B: We live.—Knowing that today’s sun may give way to tomorrow’s rain.

Question 6

Read the first stanza from "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

Revolt · Accepted Answer

B: by comparing humans to clouds

Question 7

Read the second stanza from "Mutability.”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

Revolt · Accepted Answer

A: They emphasize the idea that thoughts can have negative effects.

Question 8

Read the excerpt from "A Defence of Poetry.”These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past.

Revolt · Accepted Answer

B: Poets are capable of effectively capturing and preserving moments of beauty and pleasure in life.

Question 9

Read the excerpt from "A Defence of Poetry.”And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination and has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression.

Revolt · Accepted Answer

A: imagination.

Question 10

Read the fourth stanza from "Mutability.”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.

Revolt · Accepted Answer

C: Emotions are ever changing.

“Mutability” and “A Defence of Poetry” by Percy Bysshe Shelley Answers

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