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

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”?

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Read the second stanza from "Mutability.”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.

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?

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.

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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.

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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.

In "A Defence of Poetry,” Shelley suggests that emotions experienced in life are constantly changing. Which lines from "Mutability” can also be seen as a reflection of this idea?