The courage that my mother hadWent with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.
The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.
Oh, if instead she'd left to me
The thing she took into the grave!
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mine the Harvest, 1945
(photo: Achomawi Indian Mother and Child from www.old-picture.com)
