A Self-Portrait

When from blank swathes of canvas I learned

To ask: 'How do I seem to mine own eyes?'

First to nature’s mirror, water, I turned,

And besought the lake to tell me no lies.

So earnestly for all the truth it strove,

It trembled: and into shifting ripplets

Parcelled my face; into prominence drove

Now eyes, now nose, now mouth, now hair-ringlets.

Stricken, I sought then man’s mirror of glass,

Melted sand silvered to limpidity,

And taxed in its self-shaped prison to pass

Back each eye its rays with alacrity

So I looked: but found only the dulled gaze

Of a wrinkled stranger; my cold shiver

Cried: is it thus you see me in your glaze

Or how I see myself in the mirror?