In her youth she must have been beautiful, This woman who works by the day; For even now after many years Her figure is graceful as she goes about her tasks; And her eyes, though dimmed, hold memories and dreams. Dreams . . . the dreams have been shattered, Redreamed and shattered again, But she still tries to piece the fragments together, Though life tells her this is useless.
A speaker watches a woman who cleans or labors by the day and sees, beneath her tired present, the person she once was. Her graceful movements and her dimmed but still remembering eyes suggest she was beautiful in youth, and the speaker reads her whole history in these small details. The poem's center is the word "dreams," which the speaker repeats and lets hang in the air before admitting what became of them: they were broken, dreamed again, and broken again.
The speaker feels tender, observant sympathy rather than pity. The woman is never mocked or reduced to her job; she keeps her grace even in ordinary work. The title matters here, since "fragments" names both the broken dreams and the way the speaker pieces her life together from glimpses. The mood is quiet and sad, but not hopeless. The final lines admit that life says her effort is useless, yet she keeps trying, and that stubbornness gives her quiet dignity.