A Hand-Mirror HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?)Outside fair costume--within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye--no more a sonorous voice or springy step; Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left--no magnetism of sex; 10 Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning! In Walter Whitman's poem, A Hand-Mirror, he discusses a hand-mirror; however, the way he does this is unique to this peom. He does not seem to establish a specific foot or meter, using different meters in different lines; as a result, it creates somewhat of a list that gives a number of things that are bieng seen in this hand mirror by the perceiver's eye. This is seen through the chaotic sound, which is lacking a set form of meter and foot. I believe that Walter chose to lack a uniform sound pattern due to the list of things that are being pointed out in the mirror by the speaker. He seems to be listing them as if stating everything that comes to his mind instead of structurally stating what he is observing, which makes way for the c
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October 2014
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