I Look into my Glass

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, ‘Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!’
For then I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

Guardo nel mio bicchiere

Guardo nel mio bicchiere,
e vedo la mia pelle consumata,
e dico: "Se Dio succedesse, il
mio cuore si fosse ristretto tanto!"

Per allora, io, indifferente
da cuori diventati freddi per me,
Potrei aspettare solitario il mio riposo senza fine
con equanimità.

Ma il Tempo, per farmi addolorare,
Una parte ruba, una parte rimane;
E scuote questa fragile cornice alla vigilia
con pulsazioni di mezzogiorno.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS – I Look into my Glass

“I Look into my Glass” is a poem written by Thomas Hardy.
Just considering the title, the intelligent reader finds some curiosity that pushes him/her to make a sense to the speaker’s point of view. Moreover he/she makes conjectures about the poem’s content.
The more stressed words are the verb “to look” and the noun “glass”. In addition, the intelligent reader can understand that the poem was written in the first person, indeed the subject pronoun “I” suggests that someone is looking at himself into a glass, that takes on the meaning of a mirror.
Simply giving a glance to the layout you can easily realise the poem is arranged into three different parts still following the same pattern of three quatrains. There is a regular pattern. Indeed, the poem follows a very precise rhyme scheme. The reading experience allows the reader to discover that each stanza performs a different function and has have different meanings, that the reader must find if he/she wants to understand the poem.
Reading the first stanza (introductory function), it’s possible to understand that the speaker begins by telling his reader what happens when he looks into his “glass,” or mirror. He is getting old, but his emotions are those of a young man, still yearning and seeking the fulfilling love. At the first line we can note the repetition of the title (“I Look into my Glass”). It is a kind of refrain that Hardy used to stick it to the reader’s mind. In the next set of four lines the speaker knows that if his heart had “grown cold” with the rest of his body, he would be able to deal with his situation. Due to the fact that this is not the case, his wait for death is going to be a painful and lonely one. There is no one in his life to wait with him. In the third stanza the speaker addresses ‘Time”. He tells the reader that time is at once stealing from him and letting “part abide.” The “part” that is allowed to abide is his heart. His physical strength and appearance have been stolen.
Hardy uses several words connected with age to conjure the image of a person who is aging fast. These are “wasting”, “shrunk” and “thin”. Later he contrasts “eve” with “throbbings of noontide”. Time is personified in line nine. To make the poet grieve, it robs him of something precious but leaves behind something else. The mood of the poem is gloomy. He is aging fast outwardly but inside he remains youthful. Time too treats him unkindly. He cannot wait for death with equanimity.
So the message of the poem is that you have to accept the fact of getting old.