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

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Read the excerpt from "A Defence of Poetry.”A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds.

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

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.

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

Read the excerpt from "A Defence of Poetry,”We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden.

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

Read the passage from "A Defence of Poetry.”A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not.In his poem "Mutability,” Shelley

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?

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.