The Keepsake, “Mary's Lesson”

A mother and child read together while seated in a fashionably furnished room, complete with caged bird and doll. Like the bird, Mary resents her lessons and wishes to escape outdoors, but at this moment of the poem, the mother calls her back to her lesson before letting her go. Although in the poem, the mother entreats Mary to study, in the image the mother allows the book to slip from their hands so the two can embrace and look into one another's faces, both book and toy abandoned for the greater intimacy of conversation.