She delves among old books. Old photographs Of by-gone kindred she has never known She holds up to the light. At some she laughs, They look so quaint. Her mother was not grown When these had taken their last leave of earth; Yet they had left behind, transferred to her, Each one a part, endowing her at birth With something they had been or that they were. She stands before the mirror now to gaze Upon a face that does not seem her own. Composite of a line from far-off days That stretches farther still to the unknown. Her great grandmother may have wondered, too, About ancestral kin she never knew. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ASPATIA'S SONG, FR. THE MAID'S TRAEGDY by JOHN FLETCHER IDLENESS by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL TO NIGHT by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY LET US HAVE PEACE by NANCY BYRD TURNER IDENTITY by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TWO SONGS FROM THE PERSIAN: 1 by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |