She was a little woman dressed in black, <br />Who stood on tiptoe with a childish air, <br />Her face and figure hidden in a sacque, <br />All but her eyes and forehead and dark hair. <br />Her brow was pale, but it was lit with light, <br />And mirth flashed out of it, it seemed in rays. <br />A childish face, but wise with woman's wit, <br />And something, too, pathetic in its gaze. <br />In the bare dusk of that unseemly place <br />I noted all, and this besides, a scar <br />Which on her cheek had left a paler trace. <br />It seemed to tell its tale of love and war. <br />That little scar! Doubt whispered of this one, <br />Boy as I was, she had not lived a nun.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/esther-a-sonnet-sequence-xii/
