| HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) | |
| Outside fair costume—within ashes and filth, | |
| No more a flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice or springy step; | |
| Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, | |
| A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh, | 5 |
| Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, | |
| Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, | |
| Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, | |
| Words babble, hearing and touch callous, | |
| No brain, no heart left—no magnetism of sex; | 10 |
| Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, | |
| Such a result so soon—and from such a beginning! | |