I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you 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-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my 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.

Questions

1. The Mirror is the speaker in this story and it is a dramatic poem because the speaker is talking directly to you.
2. 1 " I am silver and exact." This is a visual image, silver (a color) 2 "The eye of a little god, four-cornered." A visual image, eye of a little god (eye, little, god) 3 " It is pink, with speckles." Visual image, pink (color) speckles (random spots) 4 "Now I am a lake." A visual image (lake) and a audible image (the sound of the waves in a lake)[farfetched] 5 "She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands." A visual image( tears, sadness, her hands)

3. The lake is an allusion to another medium that reflects appearance. The
mirror is using the picture of a woman leaning over a lake to see how see
looks, as opposed to looking into the mirror on the wall in the first
stanza. The allusion of the lake allows the poet to continue the metaphor
by having the "young girl drown" as a symbol of aging