Textarchiv - Adah Isaacs Menken

My Heritage

mrbot — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 21:00:01 +0000

"My heritage!" It is to live within
The marts of Pleasure and of Gain, yet be
No willing worshiper at either shrine;
To think, and speak, and act, not for my pleasure,
But others'. The veriest slave of time
And circumstances. Fortune's toy!
To hear of fraud, injustice, and oppression,
And feel who is the unshielded victim.
Cold friends and causeless foes!
Proud thoughts that rise to fall.
Bright stars that set in seas of blood;
Affections, which are passions, lava-like
Destroying what they rest upon. Love's
Fond and fervid tide preparing icebergs
That fragile bark, this loving human heart.
O'ermastering Pride!
Ruler of the Soul!
Life, with all its changes, cannot bow ye.
Soul-subduing Poverty!
That lays his iron, cold grasp upon the high
Free spirit: strength, sorrow-born, that bends
But breaks not in his clasp—all, all
These are "my heritage!"
And mine to know a reckless human love, all passionand intensity, and see a mist come o'er the scene, a dimness steal o'er the soul!
Mine to dream of joy and wake to wretchedness!
Mine to stand on the brink of life
One little moment where the fresh'ning breeze
Steals o'er the languid lip and brow, telling
Of forest leaf, and ocean wave, and happy
Homes, and cheerful toil; and bringing gently
To this wearied heart its long-forgotten
Dreams of gladness.
But turning the fevered cheek to meet the soft kiss of the winds, my eyes look to the sky, where I send up my soul in thanks. The sky is clouded—no stars—no music—the heavens are hushed.
My poor soul comes back to me, weary and disappointed.
The very breath of heaven, that comes to all, comes not to me.
Bound in iron gyves of unremitting toil, my vital air is wretchedness—what need I any other?
"My heritage!" The shrouded eye, the trampled leaf, wind-driven and soiled with dust—these tell the tale.
Mine to watch
The glorious light of intellect
Burn dimly, and expire; and mark the soul,
Though born in Heaven, pause in its high career,
Wave in its course, and fall to grovel in
The darkness of earth's contamination, till
Even Death shall scorn to give a thing
So low his welcome greeting!
Who would be that pale,
Blue mist, that hangs so low in air, like Hope
That has abandoned earth, yet reacheth
Not the stars in their proud homes?
A dying eagle, striving to reach the sun?
A little child talking to the gay clouds as they flaunt past in their purple and crimson robes?
A timid little flower singing to the grand old trees?
Foolish waves, leaping up and trying to kiss the moon?
A little bird mocking the stars?
Yet this is what men call Genius.

Adah Isaacs Menken

1868

Resurgam

mrbot — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 21:00:01 +0000

Yes, yes, dear love! I am dead!
Dead to you!
Dead to the world!
Dead for ever!
It was one young night in May.
The stars were strangled, and the moon was blind with the flying clouds of a black despair.
Years and years the songless soul waited to drift out beyond the sea of pain where the shapeless life was wrecked.
The red mouth closed down the breath that was hard and fierce.
The mad pulse beat back the baffled life with a low sob.
And so the stark and naked soul unfolded its wings to the dimness of Death!
A lonely, unknown Death.
A Death that left this dumb, living body as his endless mark.
And left these golden billows of hair to drown the whiteness of my bosom.
Left these crimson roses gleaming on my forehead to hide the dust of the grave.
And Death left an old light in my eyes, and old music for my tongue, to deceive the crawling worms that would seek my warm flesh.
But the purple wine that I quaff sends no thrill of Love and Song through my empty veins.
Yet my red lips are not pallid and horrified.
Thy kisses are doubtless sweet that throb out an eternal passion for me!
But I feel neither pleasure, passion nor pain.
So I am certainly dead.
Dead in this beauty!
Dead in this velvet and lace!
Dead in these jewels of light!
Dead in the music!
Dead in the dance!

II.

Why did I die?
O love! I waited—I waited years and years ago.
Once the blaze of a far-off edge of living Love crept up my horizon and promised a new moon of Poesy.
A soul's full life!
A soul's full love!
And promised that my voice should ring trancing shivers of rapt melody down the grooves of this dumb earth.
And promised that echoes should vibrate along the purplespheres of unfathomable seas, to the soundless folds of the clouds.
And promised that I should know the sweet sisterhood of the stars.
Promised that I should live with the crooked moon in her eternal beauty.
But a Midnight swooped down to bridegroom the Day.
The blazing Sphynx of that far off, echoless promise, shrank into a drowsy shroud that mocked the crying stars of my soul's unuttered song.
And so I died.
Died this uncoffined and unburied Death.
Died alone in the young May night
Died with my fingers grasping the white throat of many a prayer.

III.

Yes, dear love, I died!
You smile because you see no cold, damp cerements of a lonely grave hiding the youth of my fair face.
No head-stone marks the gold of my poor unburied head.
But the flaunting poppy covered her red heart in the sand.
Who can hear the slow drip of blood from a dead soul?
No Christ of the Past writes on my laughing brow His "Resurgam."
Resurgam.
What is that when I have been dead these long weary years!

IV.

Silver walls of Sea!
Gold and spice laden barges!
White-sailed ships from Indian seas, with costly pearls and tropic wines go by unheeding!
None pause to lay one token at my feet.
No mariner lifts his silken banner for my answering hail
No messages from the living to the dead.
Must all lips fall out of sound as the soul dies to be heard?
Shall Love send back no revelation through this interminable distance of Death?
Can He who promised the ripe Harvest forget the weeping Sower?
How can I stand here so calm?
I hear the clods dosing down my coffin, and yet shriek not out like the pitiless wind, nor reach my wild arms after my dead soul!
Will no sun of fire again rise over the solemn East?
I am tired of the foolish moon showing only her haggard face above the rocks and chasms of my grave.
O Rocks! O Chasms! sink back to your black cradles in the West!
Leave me dead in the depths!
Leave me dead in the wine!
Leave me dead in the dance!

How did I die?
The man I loved —he—he—ah, well!
There is no voice from the grave.
The ship that went down at sea, with seven times a thousand souls for Death, sent back no answer.
The breeze is voiceless that saw the sails shattered in the mad tempest, and heard the cry for mercy as one frail arm clung to the last spar of the sinking wreck.
Fainting souls rung out their unuttered messages to the silent clouds.
Alas! I died not so!
I died not so!

VI.

How did I die?
No man has wrenched his shroud from his stiffened corpse to say..
"Ye murdered me!"
No woman has died with enough of Christ in her soul to tear the bandage from her glassy eyes and say:
"Ye crucified me!"
Resurgam! Resurgam!

Adah Isaacs Menken

1868

Dreams of Beauty

mrbot — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 21:00:01 +0000

Visions of Beauty, of Light, and of Love,
Born in the soul of a Dream,
Lost, like the phantom-bird under the dove,
When she flies over a stream—

Come ye through portals where angel wings droop,
Moved by the heaven of sleep?
Or, are ye mockeries, crazing a soul,
Doomed with its waking to weep?

I could believe ye were shadows of earth,
Echoes of hopes that are vain,
But for the music ye bring to my heart,
Waking its sunshine again.

And ye are fleeting. All vainly I strive
Beauties like thine to portray;
Forth from my pencil the bright picture starts,
And—ye have faded away.

Like to a bird that soars up from the spray,
When we would fetter its wing;
Like to the song that spurns Memory's grasp
When the voice yearneth to sing;

Like the cloud-glory that sunset lights up,
When the storm bursts from its height;
Like the sheet-silver that rolls on the sea,
When it is touched by the night—

Bright, evanescent, ye come and are gone,
Visions of mystical birth;
Art that could paint you was never vouchsafed
Unto the children of earth.

Yet in my soul there's a longing to tell
All you have seemed unto me,
That unto others a glimpse of the skies
You in their sorrow might be.

Vain is the wish. Better hope to describe
All that the spirit desires,
When through a cloud of vague fancies and schemes
Flash the Promethean fires.

Let me then think of ye, Visions of Light,
Not as the tissue of dreams.
But as realities destined to be
Bright in Futurity's beams.

Ideas formed by a standard of earth
Sink at Reality's shrine
Into the human and weak like ourselves,
Losing the essence divine;

But the fair pictures that fall from above
On the heart's mirror sublime
Carry a signature written in tints,
Bright with the future of time,

And the heart, catching them, yieldeth a spark
Under each stroke of the rod—
Sparks that fly upward and light the New Life,
Burning an incense to God!

Adah Isaacs Menken

1868