I SAT at dinner in my prime, And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass, And started as if I had seen a crime, And prayed the ghastly show might pass. Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight, Grinning back to me as my own; I well-nigh fainted with affright At finding me a haggard crone. My husband laughed. He had slily set A warping mirror there, in whim To startle me. My eyes grew wet; I spoke not all the eve to him. He was sorry, he said, for what he had done, And took away the distorting glass, Uncovering the accustomed one; And so it ended? No, alas, Fifty years later, when he died, I sat me in the selfsame chair, Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed, I saw the sideboard facing there; And from its mirror looked the lean Thing I'd become, each wrinkle and score The image of me that I had seen In jest there fifty years before. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A POST-IMPRESSIONIST SUSURRATION FOR THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER by HAYDEN CARRUTH LET ME NOT LOSES MY DREAM by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON PENT by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TEARS AND KISSES by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |