{
 "id": "walt-whitman/a-hand-mirror",
 "title": "A Hand-Mirror",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 115,
 "container": "By the Roadside",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1860,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1860–61)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1860–61 scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesofgrass00whituoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "by-the-roadside.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 67,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Hold it up sternly⁠—see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Words babble, hearing and touch callous,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such a result so soon⁠—and from such a beginning!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}