As growth of form or momentary glance <br />In a child's features will recall to mind <br />The father's with the mother's face combin'd,— <br />Sweet interchange that memories still enhance: <br />And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, <br />The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, <br />Till in the blended likeness now we find <br />A separate man's or woman's countenance:— <br />So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain, <br />Its very parents, evermore expand <br />To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain, <br />By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd; <br />And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand <br />There comes the sound as of abundant rain.<br /><br />Dante Gabriel Rossetti<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-lx-transfigured-life/
