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 lines from "mutability” most reflect a similar idea?
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
it is the same! —for, be it joy or sorrow,
the path of its departure still is free