The Farewell Hidden Behind a Smile

In the final movement comes the parting. Despite the fear and sorrow filling her, the poet refuses to let her mother see her distress. She smiles — and the word for smiling is repeated to show that the smile is held on purpose, made to keep going — and she says the ordinary, hopeful words of goodbye, telling her mother that they will see each other again soon. The reassurance is genuine in its love but not in its confidence: beneath the smile the poet is anxious and afraid. The poem closes on this quiet act of self-control, in which grief is masked by a brave, loving smile so that the mother is spared the daughter's pain. …