Mutability
Mutability - meaning Summary
Transience of Outward Forms
The sonnet reflects on impermanence: worldly structures and appearances inevitably decay while underlying truth endures. Wordsworth likens decline to a musical, melancholy scale heard by the morally uncorrupted, and uses images like frosty rime and a fallen tower to show how even majestic, recent things dissolve under Time’nd small, casual events. The poem contrasts transient outward forms with a lasting, though less visible, truth.
Read Complete AnalysesFrom low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail; A musical but melancholy chime, Which they can hear who meddle not with crime, Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. Truth fails not; 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; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time.
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