A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty
A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty - meaning Summary
Facing Age with Whimsy
The poem humorously portrays Miranda confronting her thirtieth birthday. She wakes in dread, sees herself aged in the mirror, and frets over the calendar. The speaker gently mocks and reassures her, contrasting human measures of time with the idea that beauty and timelessness make numbers irrelevant. The poem treats aging as both comic anxiety and something softened by affection and perspective, ending with a rhetorical question that reframes age as negligible compared with renewal.
Read Complete AnalysesUnwillingly Miranda wakes, Feels the sun with terror, One unwilling step she takes, Shuddering to the mirror. Miranda in Miranda's sight Is old and gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty. Shining like the morning star, Like the twilight shining, Haunted by a calendar, Miranda is a-pining. Silly girl, silver girl, Draw the mirror toward you; Time who makes the years to whirl Adorned as he adored you. Time is timelessness for you; Calendars for the human; What's a year, or thirty, to Loveliness made woman? Oh, Night will not see thirty again, Yet soft her wing, Miranda; Pick up your glass and tell me, then-- How old is Spring, Miranda?
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