Time

James Abbot McNeil Whistler

Symphony in Grey and Green: The Ocean

Time

Unfathomable Sea! whole waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe

Arc brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow

Claspest the limits of mortality,

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,

Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;

Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,

Who shall put forth on thee,

Unfathomable Sea?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Mutability

Tamara de Lempicka

Sleeping Woman

Mutability
(Publ. 1824)

I.
The flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies

What is this worlds delight?

Lightning that mocks the night

Brief even as bright.

I I.
Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship how rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss

For proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,

Survive their joy, and all

Which ours we call.

I I I.
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.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Mutability

Paul Gauguin

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where are We Going?

Mutability

We are the 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:

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 foe, 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;

Nought may endure but Mutability.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

extract from The Masque of Anarchy

Gustave Boulanger

The Slave Market

extract from

The Masque of Anarchy

Rise, like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep had fall'n on you.

What is Freedom? Ye can tell
That which Slavery is too well,
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~