In William Wordsworth’s poem, “Mutability”, we find that the poem’s structure is built around the theme of wisdom and knowledge. It is this wisdom and knowledge of life that give the poem its skeleton. Wordsworth utilizes various sharp techniques to not only tell us about this wisdom he is knowledgeable about, but to show us through nature and life how exactly it is that this wisdom functions. In “Mutability”, we find a strong sense of direction—not the kind of direction we “have to take” but the direction life takes. Wordsworth portrays the big picture of life through the use of organized structure, directional symbolism, change in tone and imagery. Through his clear-cut examples of nature and personifying abstract concepts—such as “truth—he achieves his goal of showing us the constant changes everyone experiences—living and nonliving things—through their lifetime.
Wordsworth lets us know right away that in this poem direction is a key concept. He does so by using directional words—“high to low” (1) and “low to high” (2). In life, we have all experienced moments of “highs to lows” and vice versa. Wordsworth wants us to relate to this knowledge about life and apply it not only on ourselves, as people. Moreover, Wordsworth wants us to take note of bigger picture and analyze it with a deeper meaning; he desires that we not only think of ourselves but rather think of life in general. The grasping and understanding of this is what makes life meaningful. The fact that we can go from a “low” point in our life to a “high” one shows that Wordsworth is attempting to open the eyes of those who read his poem—or at least refresh our thoughts on life’s constant morphing. He clearly expresses that life is continuously and constantly changing. There is not a single moment of stability in life; life is always “mutating”. Thus, the title of the poem plays a vital role in the interpretation and understanding of the poem itself. Mutability is defined as “the quality of being capable of mutation” (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=mutability).
We can see mutability on the poem’s organizational structure. Following the pattern of an Italian/Petrarchan poem, the poem has a rhyme scheme of ABBA-ACCA-DAC-DCA. Even this structure portrays the constant change life takes. One moment we are ABBA but then our “B’s” change to “C’s” on the next phase. Wordsworth’s intellectual capabilities are amazing; we expect the poem to continue the ABBA pattern but we get ACCA instead—which is rather surprising on a first read. This is much like life . . . because the change takes us by surprise, it is unexpected.
The idea of dissolution is part of Wordsworth use of imagery throughout the poem. He introduces us to this idea of things falling apart, or becoming undone on the first line: “From low to high doth dissolution climb” (1). He intends to demonstrate that things change back and forth, much like the states of matter in nature—solid to liquid; back to solid, back to liquid. This is clearly illustrated by the imagery he uses when describing snow (frost) melting away—hence, corroborating his statement that things usually tend to change. Furthermore, Wordsworth uses a “scale” as another form of imagery to depict this never-ending change. It can be a numerical scale or a musical scale. In this case, Wordsworth continues by applying this scale to musical sounds and notes: “. . . along a scale of awful notes . . . a musical but melancholy chime” (2-4). The scale shows a perfect example of how music changes—notes go up and down; tones go high and low.
The mutating pattern is present in every piece of the poem. We can observe that the poem itself can be dissolved into two different pieces. As previously mentioned, the first six lines talk about direction, musical notes and a scale—things that represent incessant change. However, though the lines following this sestet are still talking about change—while the poem’s structure itself changes—Wordsworth denotes that there are things in life that do not “change”, such as seen in line 7: “Truth fails not”. Indeed, the truth will always be true; that is not something that will change. For instance, we can say the sky is blue and that the simple truth. The sky is blue, period. Through this shocking statement—given on line 7—we understand that very few things indeed stay true and unchanged. Regardless of the latter statement, I believe Wordsworth intended for readers to grasp that the essence of things stay the same, just the “shell” of those things change.
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