I Look into my Glass analysis

By reading the title, I expect the poem to be about one’s issues linked to time.

Looking at the layout, you could check that your assumption (regarding the fact that this textual form is a poem) proved right: indeed, each line starts with a capital letter; moreover, there is a figure of speech in the title, the assonance of ai in words “I” and “my”. There aren’t any blank spaces to separate each stanza, but if you look more thoroughly you could notice that something else has got their function, punctuation. Therefore, the poem is arranged into 3 stanzas, to tell the truth into 3 quatrains. Furthermore, you could notice that the first line is the same as the title, so now you know that the poem belongs to a collection.

The content of the poem is the old age and its effects on one’s image. Time aspect is very meaningful and it is recalled in different verb, prepositions and nouns such as “came to pass”, “grown”, “for then”, “endless”, “eve” and “noontide”. What matters most is the comparison between his/her current situation and his/her youth, changes. These thoughts are also underlined by verb tenses used (simple present, simple past and past perfect) and their alternation. Memories can hurts, so the speaker thinks that there is nothing left to do but wait for her endless rest. There is a sense of frustration and impotence of the speaker that covers the poem.

Its rhyme scheme is ABAB. What about figures of speech? There are a metonymy (l.1), a run-on-line (l.9), a chiasmus (l.10), an onomatopoeic expression (l.12) and alliterations of “w” in the second line and of “f” in the eleventh line. Well, the metonymy “Glass” is chosen instead of “mirror”, because it is a word with a long sound, which gives the reader the perception of continuity, something not-stopped, while the second word, with “o” and the alliteration of “r”, gives back counter feelings. Run-on-lines and chiasmus make the poem fluid and give the reader the idea of dynamicity like the runny youth of the speaking voice. The alliteration of “w” conveys the fright of time and its effects and the one of “f” in “fragile frame” shows the impotence in front of it.