Mirror
Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of a little god, four-conered.
Most of the I meditat on opposite wall.
It is pink, with spectacles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of heart.But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Analyze
Many poetic devices is shown in this poem. First, the speaker of this poem is "I" which personification is used to the mirror.
For the first stanza, the reader can see many personifications, like the mirror can see and swallow. Also the mirror saids that itself is truthful, and this means that a mirror can show the person's inner heart. Starting from the fifth line, the speaker describes the girl who is the owner(?) of the mirror in a room. It also thinks that she could be the part of its(the mirror's) heart(that is innocent), but later it says that the part of its heart flickers, and later darkness separate them over and over. Perhaps the darkness can symbolize sins(or losing purity) as the young girl grows up.
On the second stanza, metaphor is used to the speaker as a lake, and it gives the deep, quiet mood of this stanza. The woman who was young looked at the mirror that shows the exact appearance and cries(maybe as a regret) and the truthful persona uses the metaphor to the old woman as a terrible fish.
