The Grown-up
The Grown-up - meaning Summary
Childhood Within Adult Presence
The poem depicts a woman who carries the weight of the world—its fears and graces—steadily and without spectacle. Her endurance and quotidian movements prepare her for a quiet, inward change signaled by a descending white veil. That veil symbolizes an irreversible passage into mature identity that nevertheless preserves the child she once was. The final image reframes adulthood as both loss and continuity: the child remains inside the grown-up self.
Read Complete AnalysesAll this stood upon her and was the world and stood upon her with all its fear and grace as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless yet wholly image, like the Ark of God, and solemn, as if imposed upon a race. As she endured it all: bore up under the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone, the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn, serenely as a woman carrying water moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play, transfiguring and preparing for the future, the first white veil descended, gliding softly over her opened face, almost opaque there, never to be lifted off again, and somehow giving to all her questions just one answer: In you, who were a child once-in you.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.