With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--

In this stanza, the poet uses rhyming and imagery. The lines that rhyme are "do I dare", "middle of my hair", and "descend the stair"; "growing thin", "to the chin", "a simple pin", and "legs are thin". I think the poet uses all of the rhyming to make it stand out more. The things that stand out are all of the imagery, like the bald spot in the head or the collar of his coat resting on his chin. Knowing what the poem is all about, I can see that this is the first time that the speaker begins to speak poorly of himself and say how he is not good enough. I now know that the bald spot is signify that he is old or past his time. He speaks as if he is thin and frail by saying "they will say: 'but how his arms and legs are thin!". I can also see how he starts to think that people will judge him and will not accept the way he is. He assumes that peole will mock him, but he is just all talk and people may not even really say things about him. Through out the poem, he is constantly guessing what people say, but it is not really the truth. The speaker is stuck in his old age and self pity, that he doesn't realize that people may htink differently than what he thinks.