"The Flower That Smiles Today"
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The flower that
smiles today
Tomorrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies;
What is this world's delight?
Lightning, that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.--
Virtue, how frail it is!--
Friendship, how rare!--
Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But these though they soon fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.--
Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm
hours creep,
Dream thou - and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep
To
discover the beauty of English poetry, we could study "Mutability," a
poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
His art is magnificently used in it: he succeeds to create melancholy
only by the power of his words and his style; he also succeeds to arouse a new
sight on life and people.
If we see the poem again, we notice that each stanza is built
with the following form: ababccc: the first line rhymes with the third one, the
second one with the fourth one, and the three last ones together.
***
By a first
analysis, we can learn some things about the poem. For example, we discover that the speaker
(the Voice) is "we", humans in general. By this choice, the poet wants to share with
us a deep thought on humankind, which we will tackle later. In a melancholy atmosphere and a gloomy tone,
the poet tackles the theme of gloominess and fleeting beauty. Whole the poem contributes to these
characteristics and we will analyze some details more specifically.
In his poem,
Shelley shows that nature and beauty is fleeting: "The flower that smiles
today / Tomorrow dies;". This
personification is beautiful: the flower can smile and die like a human; but
the contrast between today and tomorrow, and between smiles and dies is
disturbing. We become aware of the fragility
of nature, of beauty, of life. Beauty
comes, but it flies as soon as we are tempted: "All that we wish to stay,
/ Tempts and then flies." The
contrast between stay and flies and their position in the lines emphasize on
their meaning. Why is beauty so
fleeting? Sherry uses irony when he
asks: "What is this world's delight?"
In this line, delight means the opposite of his real meaning; it means
absurd. And Shelley continues with a new
personification with the "Lightning that mocks the night, / Brief even as
bright.", using in the same time an antithesis between lightning, night
and bright - and an alliteration in the last line (brief, bright). Brief, the
flower, the symbol of Beauty, is fleeting and the poet wants that we become
aware of this.
In the second stanza, we discover the real
nature of the Beauty of the flower and we understand the image of the first
stanza. The flower, and his beauty,
represent the ideal of the best human nature.
Virtue, friendship and love are the qualities of wise and sincere
people. Unfortunately, "Virtue, how
frail it is! / Friendship how rare! / Love, how it sells poor bliss / For proud
despair!" These qualities are very
difficult to find, and the poet shows the absurdity of this situation by making
an antithesis between poor bliss and proud despair, with amazing word
arrangements. The poet continues by
making an alliteration in the last line of the following three lines: "But
we, though soon they fall, / Survive their joy and all / Which ours we
call."
In the last stanza,
new images are used. Shelley begins by
using an anaphora by repeating whilst at the beginning of the first, second,
third and fifth line:
"Whilst skies are blue and
bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day,
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
These lines show a
beautiful nature where happiness seems to be the law. The "skies are blue and bright", the
"flowers are gay", full of colors, the "eyes that change ere
night / Make glad the day": these expressions give an impression of serenity,
near heaven. But a change happens at the
fifth line: the word yet emphasizes the fourth whilst. Effectively, "the calm hours
creep," slowly move, "Dream thou - and from thy sleep / Then wake to
weep." The words are all giving a
calm impression when a climax presents words in the order of their increasing
strength, up to the final surprise, which is written as an alliteration. First, "the calm hours creep";
then, the word dream is used, followed by sleep and wake. The final surprise is that we quit our dream
to cry: "Then wake to weep."
Heaven is a dream. In fact, it is
difficult to find virtue, friendship and love among humans, and like the flower
that smiles a day and dies the next one, each time we find something
interesting, tempting, it flies and never comes back.
***
On the whole, Percy
Bysshe Shelley has succeeded to share his thoughts about humankind with his
poem entitled "Mutability". He
has succeeded by his style and by the good choice of words. But more than a share of thoughts, a poem is
a form of language where the reader goes to discover his own emotions aroused
by it and a place where the reader can play the creator's role by filling in
the parts where the poet stays deliberately unclear.
4 comments:
what is the effect of comparing this world's delight to lighting?
i dont know
I also do not know
Guys it's obvious, just read the poem....
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