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.