At The Dinner-table Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD CECE FBFB CGCG HIHI| I sat at dinner in my prime | A |
| And glimpsed my face in the sideboard glass | B |
| And started as if I had seen a crime | A |
| And prayed the ghastly show might pass | B |
| - | |
| Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight | C |
| Grinning back to me as my own | D |
| I well nigh fainted with affright | C |
| At finding me a haggard crone | D |
| - | |
| My husband laughed He had slily set | C |
| A warping mirror there in whim | E |
| To startle me My eyes grew wet | C |
| I spoke not all the eve to him | E |
| - | |
| He was sorry he said for what he had done | F |
| And took away the distorting glass | B |
| Uncovering the accustomed one | F |
| And so it ended No alas | B |
| - | |
| Fifty years later when he died | C |
| I sat me in the selfsame chair | G |
| Thinking of him Till weary eyed | C |
| I saw the sideboard facing there | G |
| - | |
| And from its mirror looked the lean | H |
| Thing I'd become each wrinkle and score | I |
| The image of me that I had seen | H |
| In jest there fifty years before | I |
Thomas Hardy
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