AT THE DINNER-TABLE

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.