Mutability

Although “Mutability” portrays change as the center of human life, its form and meter are predictable. The poem has an organized look; it consists of four quatrains or four stanzas with four lines. The rhyme scheme is reliable. In each stanza, the first and third line rhyme, and the second and fourth line rhyme. The meter, too, doesn’t deviate. Shelley uses iambic pentameter, with five iambs per line or five sets of unstressed-stressed syllables for a total of 10 syllables in each line (to arrive at 10 syllables, some words might require peculiar pronunciation). In Line 1, don’t stress “[w]e” but stress “are,” don’t stress “as,” but stress “clouds,” and so on. Unlike human nature, the poem’s form and meter abides by a fixed pattern.

The stable form and meter add tension to the poem. By contrasting the overarching theme of mutability with an immutable form and meter, Shelley arguably highlights the power of instability. The formulaic presentation allows the reader to focus on the words or the content. If Shelley had chosen to write the poem in free verse, the content and the form might clash, and the message of mutability could get lost in the mutable form.