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Slanting Lines
One Friday morning when we set sail
and our ship not far from land
(Navigation was always a difficult art,
Though with only one ship and one bell.)
we there did espy a fair pretty maid
with a comb and a glass in her hand.
See the pretty girl in that mirror there—
Who can that attactive girl be?
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
Mirror mirror on the wall
who is the fairest of them all?
(The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As comely or as kindly or as young as what she was!)
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side.
I look into the mirror, but it’s cracked
And won’t be fixed and always did refract
The one before it into at least two.