#1

Aghajanian,Zenna
Period 5
4/26/17

There Is Beauty In Change

 Virginia Woolf once said,The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover
loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice. What
most people seem to forget is that Woolf was, and is, correct. We live in a transient world, one
that is in a constant state of change. And despite our best efforts to slow it down, the world
goes on. Over the centuries, poets, musicians, and authors alike have attempted to capture the
essence of this idea. Whether or not they truly succeeded, however, relies on the readers
perception. Two such examples of poems that have successfully displayed similar themes of
transience are Robert Frosts Nothing Gold Can Stay and Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

These two poems have many similarities. From the themes themselves to the writing style
and language used, the poems seem to overlap constantly. It is clear that both poems have a
transient theme by their titles. In Shelleys poem, the titles significance is easy to spot if one
knows the meaning of said title. Mutability means the tendency to change, which explains the
poem's meaning entirely. This leaves less to the readers interpretation, instead leaning heavily
on the definition of the title.Frosts poem, however, is more difficult to comprehend, as people
dont often make the crucial connection of gold signifying something valuable and good. If this
is kept in mind, it is far easier to comprehend the title; that nothing good can stay.

Throughout both poems, the theme of change is represented by the natural world. Shelley
speaks of how 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 forever:. This symbolizes our human nature through the natural world. Frost too, says in
his poem that ...dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. Both poems use natural
occurrences to describe change itself, encouraging us to easily compare ourselves to the world
around us.

These poets must have thought similarly, as they used personification in their language to
assist in making the reader empathize with the poem. When Shelley wrote We feel, conceive
or reason, laugh or weep, embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: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, he was effective in making the reader feel connected to the meaning of his words.
As Frost wrote that Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief , clearly, both poets are
able to capture readers by using personification in their poems, which leads us to feel an
inherent closeness with the characters in the poem.

All these aspects, however, are not what pull readers in, but rather these poems ability to
open the reader to the world around them. These poets help us recognize the value in our lives
by delving into the possibility of it not existing as we have always expected it to. We live in a
society that makes it challenging to take a moment and appreciate the world around us. We go
through our lives without taking note of many things around us. So perhaps we should be
thankful that there are poets like Frost and Shelley. After all, who else will be there to help us
learn to appreciate the beauty in life?