Mutability Transience Quotes

OK, so the title isn’t really a quote from the poem, but we have to include it because the word "mutability" only appears in the title. Mutability is an abstract word that alludes to a tradition of dealing with time and death in English poetry. Wordsworth is like, "OK, guys and gals, it’s my turn to take on the whole transience thing, just letting you know."

"Dissolution" is another word for transience in the poem. Think "dissolve," like a tablet of Alka Seltzer dissolving in water. Time creates change by wearing away at old things.

The comparison between dissolution and music is appropriate because change is necessary for music to exist. Imagine a song with only one note or chord continuing to play endlessly. Would you want to listen to that song? Or, as the American poet Wallace Stevens later put it, "Death is the mother of beauty."

So what is this "truth"? Does it too undergo change, or does it stay the same the way grass continues to exist after the frost has melted off it?

Transience often takes the form of a very gradual change that suddenly results in a breaking point. The tower has retained the same basic form over the years, albeit a little worse for wear, but it has been slowly weakening to the point that a loud noise can bring it down.