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Portrait Of A Woman
By Edgar Lee Masters
The pathos in your face is like a peace,
It is like resignation or a grace
Which smiles at the surcease
Of hope. But there is in your face
The shadow of pain, and there is a trace
Of memory of pain.
I look at you again and again,
And hide my looks lest your quick eye perceives
My search for your despair.
I look at your pale hands, I look at your hair;
And I watch you use your hands, I watch the flare
Of thought in your eyes like light that interweaves
A flutter of color running under leaves,
Such anguished dreams in your eyes!
And I listen to you speak
Words like crystals breaking with a tinkle,
Or a star's twinkle.
Sometimes as we talk you rise
And leave the room, and then I rub a streak
Of a tear from my cheek.
You tell me such magical things
Of pictures, books, romance
And of your life in France
In the varied music of exquisite words,
And in a voice that sings.
All things are memory now with you,
For poverty girds
Your hopes, and only your dreams remain.
And sometimes here and there
I see as you turn your head a whitened hair,
Even when you are smiling most.
And a light comes in your eyes like a passing ghost,
And a color runs through your cheeks as fresh
As burns in a girl's flesh.
Then I can shut my eyes and feel the pain
That has become a part of you, though I feign
Laughter myself. One sees another's bruise
And shakes his thought out of it shuddering.
So I turn and clamp my will lest I bring
Your sorrow into my flesh, who cannot choose
But hear your words and laughter,
And watch your hands and eyes.
Then as I think you over after
I have gone from you, and your face
Comes to me with its grace
Of memory of unfound love:
You seem to me the image of all women
Who dream and keep under smiles the grief thereof,
Or sew, or sit by windows, or read books
To hide their Secret's looks.
And after a time go out of life and leave
No uttered words but in their silence grieve
For Life and for the things no tongue can tell:
Why Life hurts so, and why Love haunts and hurts
Poor men and women in this demi-hell.
Perhaps your pathos means that it is well
Death in his time the aspiring torch inverts,
And all tired flesh and haunted eyes and hands
Moving in painéd whiteness are put under
The soothing earth to brighten April's wonder.
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