Mutability
by William Wordsworth

English Romantic poet and poet-laureate, whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), first published anonymously with contributions by his friend Coleridge, marked an important turning point in the history of English literature. Some of his many well-known poems include 'The Brothers', 'Michael' and the "Lucy" poems: 'She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways', 'Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known', 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal' and 'Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower'. His other great work, the philosophical-autobiographical poem The Prelude was published posthumously in 1850. He also published two poems dealing with the sublime and the picturesque; An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches (both in 1793), and his one and only play The Borders (1842). Wordsworth's name, perhaps even more so than that of his friend Coleridge, remains to this day almost synonymous, in England, with Romanticism itself.

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Mutability
by William Wordsworth

From 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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Mutability by William Wordsworth