A Hand-mirror
A Hand-mirror - meaning Summary
Mirror of Bodily Decay
Whitman’s short lyric uses the image of a hand mirror to confront the reader with the gap between outward appearance and inner decay. A single, direct address asks who is reflected, then enumerates physical and moral deterioration—disease, addiction, lost vitality—suggesting how vice or neglect transforms a vibrant self into a ruined body. The poem functions as a stark, moralizing admonition about consequences visible "ere you go hence."
Read Complete AnalysesHOLD 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; Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon—and from such a beginning!
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