Portrait Poem by Jan Struther

ALL through the party she stood, saying nothing.
Talk fluttered around her; quick gay words
Like spring-enchanted birds
Darted, their wings flashing with the sheen of laughter.
She, a tall young ash-tree, stood there among them
As though she were alive with a different kind of life,
Slower, wiser, the sap rising surely.

Her stillness soothed my eyes;
Her silence rested my ears.
I could not leave her, I could not look away.
Wondering what lay-
What depth, hue, texture and cast of mind-
Concealed behind
That grave three-cornered face
Widening upwards from an abrupt and childish chin;
That sweet straight mouth, as yet not bracketed
(Though both, in twenty years, must have been guests there)
By the immutable, unerring
Marks of grief's burin
Or the tenderer impress of habitual joy;
Those lake-long, wood-ash-grey, thought-clouded eyes,
And the wide brow from which, beautifully growing,
(Like sculpture, still but flowing),
Swept back the scrolled,
Bracken-brown, barley-gold,
Curved and curling masses of her brindled hair.