“Mutability” Introduction

• "Mutability" is William Wordsworth's reflection on the inevitability (and beauty) of change. Nothing in the world lasts forever, the poem argues, and "dissolution" and decay can be shocking. But those who can accept change also learn to see the universe from a broader perspective, understanding that even mortal and mutable creatures are part of an eternal music. Wordsworth first published this poem in his 1821 collection Ecclesiastical Sonnets.

• Read the full text of “Mutability”

“Mutability” Summary

• Dissolution (the process of gradually fading away) makes its way from the lowest things to the highest things and back again, as if it were awe-inspiring music traveling up and down a scale—music that will always be harmonious. The bell-like sounds of this music are both beautiful and sad, and can only be heard by people who don't get involved in criminal behavior, who aren't greedy, and who don't worry too much. Truth itself never decays, but the things we get used to seeing as true, when they've been around for long enough, eventually disappear, just like the frost that made the hills and fields look white in the morning but then melted away. Those old forms of truth fall like a grand tower of days past, a noble ruin that seemed to wear the weeds growing at its top like a crown, but couldn't hold up against the vibrations of one insignificant little shout breaking the silence—or the inconceivable hand of time falling on it.

“Mutability” Themes

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  The Power and Beauty of Change

  Wordsworth’s “Mutability” suggests that nothing in the world stays the same forever. The poem’s speaker reminds readers that grand buildings and human lives are no more solid than frost on the grass; everything melts away sooner or later. That doesn’t mean humanity should live in terror of change, however. Those who can accept this “mutability” (or changeability), the speaker argues, will find it has a beauty of its own because change creates the metaphorical “notes” in the music of existence. The sonnet ultimately suggests that while change (and the endings it brings about) can feel shocking and disturbing, it’s also an essential part of the harmony of the universe.

  Everything from “high to low,” the poem suggests, is subject to “dissolution.” In other words, everything, without exception, fades away eventually, destroyed by the “unimaginable touch of Time.” Even the most “sublime” and glorious tower, the speaker observes, will eventually become a crumbled ruin, disappearing as surely as “frosty rime” on the grass melts when the sun comes up. Focusing more on endings than fresh beginnings, these images subtly remind readers that death is the most obvious example of inevitable change. To live with change, the poem implies, is to live with loss and grief.

  But while change can feel destabilizing and destructive, the poem also sees it as a part of a great and harmonious order. Comparing the rhythms of “dissolution” to the movement of notes up and down the scale, the speaker suggests that change isn’t just “melancholy”: it’s “musical” too, part of a song sung by the whole universe. Without change, after all, there could be no music—just one droning note.

  Those who can step back from their personal fear of loss and death, the poem ultimately argues, can learn to embrace the inevitability of change, understanding that it shapes the music of existence.

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  The Wisdom of Selflessness

  “Mutability” suggests that change (and even the decay it brings with it) can be as beautiful as music—but that perceiving that beauty is no easy task. The poem’s speaker argues that in order appreciate the rhythms of change, people have to put aside their petty anxieties and desires. Only through taking a broad, unselfish perspective on life, the poem suggests, can people perceive the comforting and eternal “Truth” that change, death, and loss are all part of the ceaseless music of existence.

  The poem argues that change gives the universe its harmonious, musical “concord,” but that music is hard to hear if one is too focused on one’s own needs and desires. Because change inevitably means loss and death, people who are full of “avarice” (or greed), caught up in “over-anxious care” (that is, excessive fretting), or otherwise involved in self-interested “crime” can’t appreciate it: they’re too worried about losing what they personally have (including their lives!) to enjoy a wider perspective.

  But those who can put aside their wishes and worries, the speaker goes on, will be able to relish the “awful” (or awe-inspiring) music of life on a grand scale—a music whose rhythms are made of constant change. They’ll also learn a consoling lesson: while the “outward forms” of things fade away, the broader “Truth” that shapes the universe “fails not.”

  In other words, the unselfish can perceive that death and change are part of the order of the universe—an order guided by a broader “Truth” that, paradoxically enough, never changes and never dies. For those who can look past their own little selves, the poem ultimately suggests, change can become a source of wisdom and consolation, a reminder that even mortal people are part of something eternal.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mutability”

• Lines 1-3

  From low to high doth dissolution climb,
  And sink from high to low, along a scale
  Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;

  "Mutability" uses a complex metaphor to introduce a complex subject: change. The poem's speaker compares "dissolution"—that is, disintegration—to notes moving up and down a scale, making a strange and "awful" music.

  "Awful," in this instance, means "awe-inspiring," not "horrible." But the speaker's choice of this ambiguous word suggests there might be something uncomfortable about the music of change. After all, the kind of change the speaker discusses here isn't new life or rebirth, but "dissolution" and decay. This will be a poem more about endings than beginnings. And endings, as this speaker well knows, are often hard for people to accept.

  But accept them they must, the poem implies. Take another look at the repetitions of the first two lines:

  From low to high doth dissolution climb,
  And sink from high to low, [...]

  The chiasmus in these lines suggests that the "music" the speaker is describing here is an eternal circle: the music of "dissolution" makes its way from "low to high," then from "high to low," over and over again. Loss and decay, in other words, are an inescapable constant.

  Let's look closer at the language of the metaphor here as well:

  • As the reader has already seen, that movement from "low to high" is an image of music—and an image of the change and "dissolution" that's necessary to music. Without high and low notes, there's no tune, just a drone. And the previous note has to dissolve away in order for the next note to take its place.
  • But the same "high and low" metaphor is also a reminder that "dissolution" affects everything and everyone, from the greatest kingdom to the lowliest bug.

  In only three lines, then, the speaker has introduced both his theme and the complex emotions people might have around it. "Dissolution," this poem will suggest, can feel terrifying and painful. But it's also an eternal part of the universe—and seen in a certain light, it's even as beautiful as music. The "awful notes" of change create, not shrieks of grief, but a "concord" (that is, a harmony) that "shall not fail": an eternal song.

• Lines 4-6

  A musical but melancholy chime,
  Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,
  Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.

  

  

• Line 7

  Truth fails not

  

  

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• Lines 7-10

  but her outward forms that bear
  The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
  That in the morning whitened hill and plain
  And is no more;

  

  

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• Lines 10-12

  drop like the tower sublime
  Of yesterday, which royally did wear
  His crown of weeds,

  

  

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• Lines 12-14

  but could not even sustain
  Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
  Or the unimaginable touch of Time.

  

  

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“Mutability” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Metaphor

  Metaphors help to communicate the poem's philosophy on change and loss.

  The poem's central extended metaphor compares change (and especially "dissolution," or disintegration) to music. The awe-inspiring "notes" of change, the speaker tells readers, rise and fall from "low to high" and "high to low" again—an idea that blends two metaphors into one:

  • That movement from "low to high" and back again suggests an evolving melody.
  • It also reminds readers that everything, from the lowliest bug to the highest tower, is part of this change: living and dying, rising and falling.

  That's why the melody of change isn't just "musical," but "melancholy": there's certainly beauty in this cycle of life and death, the speaker suggests, but people have to accept the sadness of loss in order to hear the harmony of the "chime."

  One of the poem's later metaphors returns to the idea that even the mightiest things fall from "high to low." Describing a once-"sublime" tower now fallen into decay, the speaker imagines it wearing a "crown of weeds"—an image that reminds readers that all crowns (that is, all worldly powers, speaking metonymically) are in reality frail and temporary.

  All it takes is a "casual shout," the speaker goes on, to "br[eak]" the silence of stasis. Using the image of a shout breaking the "silent air," the speaker again reminds readers that change inevitably brings destruction with it.

  It takes a keen listener, these metaphors suggest, to hear the music of grief and change—to find beauty in life's inevitable losses.

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• Simile

  

  
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• Personification

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

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• Paradox

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

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"Mutability" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Mutability
• Doth
• Dissolution
• Awful
• Concord
• Melancholy
• Chime
• Avarice
• Care
• Rime
• Sublime
• Sustain

• Changeability.

  • See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mutability”

• Form

  "Mutability" is a sonnet—more specifically, a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet. That means that it uses a standard form: 14 lines of iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme that divides the poem into an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet. (See Rhyme Scheme and Meter for more detailed explanations of these terms.)

  This particular sonnet also splits into two clear thematic chunks: the first six lines introduce the poem's themes of order and change through the metaphor of music, and the remaining eight evoke decay through a series of similes.

  That division is a little bit unusual for a Petrarchan sonnet, which usually follows the rhythm of the rhyme scheme and changes tack after the first eight lines instead, in a moment called the volta, or "turn." This unusual volta fits right in with the poem's themes of change and upheaval: here, the traditional sonnet form seems no steadier than that "tower sublime" that crashes to the ground in the poem's final image.

• Meter

  Like most sonnets, "Mutability" is written in iambic pentameter. That means that each of its lines uses five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's a perfect example from line 1:

  From low | to high | doth dis- | solu- | tion climb,

  Many readers and writers have compared this meter to a heartbeat or footsteps: it's a swinging, regular rhythm, and one that often turns up naturally in spoken English.

  It's also flexible, allowing poets to add little variations that draw attention to important moments. Listen to the rhythm in line 7, for instance:

  Truth fails | not; but | her out- | ward forms | that bear

  Here, Wordsworth matches a strong meter to a strong declaration. The first foot here is a spondee, a one-two punch of a foot that puts two stresses in a row: DUM-DUM. The next foot is then a trochee—the opposite of an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm.

  There's no ignoring the changed meter of this line: it's like the speaker is pounding the table as he insists that Truth never dies.

• Rhyme Scheme

  "Mutability" uses an innovative variation on the traditional rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet. The rhymes run like this:

  ABBA ACCA DACDCA

  There's a lot going on here! Most Italian sonnets start with an eight-line octave that uses an ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme. Wordsworth breaks from that convention right away by introducing a new C rhyme instead (lines 6 and 7, "care"/"bear," don't rhyme with lines 2 and 3, "scale"/"fail," as they would in a normal Italian sonnet).

  Then, the remaining six-line sestet, which would normally use new rhymes in an orderly pattern—the CDCDCD of this Keats sonnet, for instance—instead goes back and scoops up rhymes from earlier in the poem (those A and C rhyme sounds) and then jumbles them together.

  These surprising choices fit in neatly with the poem's theme of constant and overwhelming change: even the sonnet form seems to fall prey to "dissolution" and disorder here. But this rhyme scheme also subtly echoes the speaker's faith that "Truth fails not." By ending on the same rhyme sound it began with ("climb"/"Time"), the poem forms a circle: the end and the beginning link up. A greater truth, the rhymes here suggest, can make order even out of what looks like chaos.

“Mutability” Speaker

• The speaker here has no clear identity, but it's reasonable to imagine that this poem speaks for Wordsworth himself. Written when Wordsworth was 51—himself creeping closer to his frosty, wintery, ruined-tower old age—"Mutability" sounds a lot like his expression of what he's learned over the course of lifelong observation. (And, for that matter, Wordsworth often wrote poetry from his own perspective.)

  But really, it doesn't so much matter whether this speaker is Wordsworth, or anyone else. This is a poem less about a person and more about a philosophy.

“Mutability” Setting

• While the poem conjures up some landscapes in its similes, there's no one clear setting here. One might even say that the poem's setting is the whole universe! The speaker is interested in forces that transcend space and time—like the "musical but melancholy chime" of change that governs the whole world.

  But images of "frosty rime" covering "hill and plain" and of an ancient, ruined "tower" wearing a "crown of weeds" might lead readers to picture a landscape rather like the Northern English countryside in which Wordsworth lived for most of his days. The phenomenon this poem explores, these images hint, appears everywhere: look out any ordinary window and you'll find evidence of "mutability."

Literary and Historical Context of “Mutability”

• Literary Context

  William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote "Mutability" in 1821, long after his revolutionary poetic heyday. In his youth, he and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge kicked off the English Romantic movement with their 1798 book Lyrical Ballads, a collaborative collection that proclaimed poetry should use everyday, folksy language (that's the "ballad" part) to explore the depths of the soul and the imagination (the "lyrical" part).

  These were very new ideas in the 18th century, whose most prominent writers (like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope) were more interested in satirical, elegant wit than plainspoken sincerity. But Wordsworth's and Coleridge's innovations would change poetry forever. Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," for example, meditated on nature and memory in a way that was completely novel in its time—and has now become a perfect example of what readers expect traditional poetry to do.

  By the time Wordsworth wrote "Mutability," he'd moved into a more conservative middle age. This poem comes from a collection of religious verse, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, whose reflections on the sweep of time and the beauty of change are the musings of an older and more settled writer.

  Many of the younger Romantic poets Wordsworth inspired, like John Keats and Leigh Hunt, were deeply disappointed in his transformation from firebrand to august old figurehead. And these days, those younger Romantics' opinions seem to have prevailed: Wordsworth is better remembered for his early work than his late. But he remains one of the most influential and beloved of all English poets.

  Historical Context

  When Wordsworth wrote "Mutability" in 1821, the world around him was indeed going through a lot of dramatic change. In 1820, King George III had finally died after a long illness, and his son George IV (who had already been ruling the country as Prince Regent) ascended officially to the throne. This spelled trouble for Britain: the younger George was a dissolute party boy, more interested in drinking and philandering than in sound governance.

  During these years, much of the British population was suffering from poverty and hunger, and rumbles of unrest sometimes led to violence. The infamous Peterloo Massacre of 1819, for instance, broke out when cavalry soldiers charged a group of protesters who were demanding wider enfranchisement and parliamentary reform. Hundreds died or were injured in the ensuing battle.

  All of this was enough to make Wordsworth very nervous indeed. As a young man, he had traveled in France around the time of the French Revolution, where he was moved and inspired by that world-changing popular uprising. But his excitement was soon shattered by the Reign of Terror, a bloody period when all of France's revolutionary energy boiled over into paranoia, treachery, and mass executions.

  This poem might be read as Wordsworth's way to manage his fear of political turmoil. By stepping back to see change and destruction as part of a wide universal "concord," this poem frames turbulent times as just one more part of an orderly divine plan.

More “Mutability” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.

  • The Wordsworth Museum — Visit the Wordsworth Museum's website to learn more about Wordsworth's life, work, and times.

  • Wordsworth's Legacy — Read a review of a recent Wordsworth biography that discusses the poet's continuing influence.

  • Wordsworth's Influence — Listen to Professor Seamus Perry discussing what makes Wordsworth's poetry important.

  • More of Wordsworth's Poetry — Read more of Wordsworth's work at the Poetry Foundation.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by William Wordsworth

  • A Complaint

  • A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

  • Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

  • Expostulation and Reply

  • Extract from The Prelude (Boat Stealing)

  • It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

  • I Travelled Among Unknown Men

  • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

  • Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

  • Lines Written in Early Spring

  • London, 1802

  • My Heart Leaps Up

  • Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room

  • Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

  • She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

  • She was a Phantom of Delight

  • Strange fits of passion have I known

  • Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind

  • The Solitary Reaper

  • The Tables Turned

  • The World Is Too Much With Us

  • Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

  • To a Snowdrop

  • We Are Seven