Lines of Life

Orphan in my first years, I early learnt
To make my heart suffice itself, and seek
Support and sympathy in its own depths.

Well, read my cheek, and watch my eye, —

Too strictly school'd are they

One secret of my soul to show,

One hidden thought betray.

I never knew the time my heart

Look'd freely from my brow;

It once was check'd by timidness,

'Tis taught by caution now.

I live among the cold, the false,

And I must seem like them;

And such I am, for I am false

As those I most condemn.

I teach my lip its sweetest smile,

My tongue its softest tone;

I borrow others' likeness, till

Almost I lose my own.

I pass through flattery's gilded sieve,

Whatever I would say;

In social life, all, like the blind,

Must learn to feel their way.

I check my thoughts like curbed steeds

That struggle with the rein;

I bid my feelings sleep, like wrecks

In the unfathom'd main.

I hear them speak of love, the deep.

The true, and mock the name;

Mock at all high and early truth,

And I too do the same.

I hear them tell some touching tale,

I swallow down the tear;

I hear them name some generous deed,

And I have learnt to sneer.

I hear the spiritual, the kind,

The pure, but named in mirth;

Till all of good, ay, even hope,

Seems exiled from our earth.

And one fear, withering ridicule,

Is all that I can dread;

A sword hung by a single hair

For ever o'er the head.

We bow to a most servile faith,

In a most servile fear;

While none among us dares to say

What none will choose to hear.

And if we dream of loftier thoughts,

In weakness they are gone;

And indolence and vanity

Rivet our fetters on.

Surely I was not born for this!

I feel a loftier mood

Of generous impulse, high resolve,

Steal o'er my solitude!

I gaze upon the thousand stars

That fill the midnight sky;

And wish, so passionately wish,

A light like theirs on high.

I have such eagerness of hope

To benefit my kind;

And feel as if immortal power

Were given to my mind.

I think on that eternal fame,

The sun of earthly gloom.

Which makes the gloriousness of death,

The future of the tomb —

That earthly future, the faint sign

Of a more heavenly one;

— A step, a word, a voice, a look, —

Alas! my dream is done!

And earth, and earth's debasing stain,

Again is on my soul;

And I am but a nameless part

Of a most worthless whole.

Why write I this? because my heart

Towards the future springs,

That future where it loves to soar

On more than eagle wings.

The present, it is but a speck

In that eternal time,

In which my lost hopes find a home,

My spirit knows its clime.

Oh! not myself, — for what am I? —

The worthless and the weak,

Whose every thought of self should raise

A blush to burn my cheek.

But song has touch’d my lips with fire.

And made my heart a shrine;

For what, although alloy'd, debased,

Is in itself divine.

I am myself but a vile link

Amid life's weary chain;

But I have spoken hallow'd words,

O do not say in vain!

My first, my last, my only wish,

Say will my charmed chords

Wake to the morning light of fame,

And breathe again my words?

Will the young maiden, when her tears

Alone in moonlight shine —

Tears for the absent and the loved —

Murmur some song of mine?

Will the pale youth by his dim lamp,

Himself a dying flame,

From many an antique scroll beside,

Choose that which bears my name?

Let music make less terrible

The silence of the dead;

I care not, so my spirit last

Long after life has fled.

458

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Infelix by Adah Isaacs Menken

Where is the promise of my years;
Once written on my brow?
Ere errors, agonies and fears
Brought with them all that speaks in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers;
Where sleeps that promise now?

Naught lingers to redeem those hours,
Still, still to memory sweet!
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers
Are withered all; and Evil towers
Supreme above her sister powers
Of Sorrow and Deceit.

I look along the columned years,