Symbol Analysis
This is the final image of the poem. Our speaker compares her work to ore (that's the raw rock that you extract gold from) and the work of her nervous male critics to "glist'ring gold." Once again it feels like she's running herself down here, but there's also a quiet pride in her humility.
- Lines 47-8: Like in line 3, our speaker calls her own talent "mean" (humble, unworthy). Still, she can definitely bust out the alliteration with the best of them ("glist'ring gold"). Maybe she's not such an unworthy poet, after all…