We are as Clouds that Veil the Midnight Moon
The speaker compares human existence to clouds that vanish into night and lyres whose responses change with each gust. Dreams, thoughts, joy and sorrow alter human experience; only change itself endures.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Philosophical Poetry · 187 words
First lines
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:
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.
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:
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Four rhymed quatrains speak collectively of shifting thoughts and feelings through comparisons with clouds and lyres.
- Philosophical Poetry — The closing stanza argues that neither joy nor sorrow lasts and that mutability alone endures.
Tags
impermanence · change · human emotions · clouds · lyres
What this Textopian page supports
We are as Clouds that Veil the Midnight Moon is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Philosophical Poetry
- Length: 187 words
- Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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