University of Virginia Library

1.—Hortense.

O, but she loved him, and the death she died
Wrote Love across her bosom. Fainter hearts
Had wept and pined themselves into the grave.
She was not fashioned of such gossamer;
For one bleak midnight, robed as for a fête,
With all her splendor, and her jewels on,
She sucked quick poison from a finger-ring,
And so they found her, in the morning—dead.
The pearls lay on her bosom like pale flowers
When no wind stirs them; with one waxen hand
She held his crumpled letter: in the room
Sat Silence and white Slumber! So she died.

2.—After the Masquerade.

We've danced the night out, Madaline.
Pleasure is sick, and Music's self has grown
As languid as a weary ballet-girl!
There's not a dozen maskers in the hall.
How like the pictures on a wizard's glass
The particolored pageant has swept by—
Fools with their bells, and Monarchs with their crowns,
Athenians, and bearded Mamalukes,
Death-heads and Satyrs, and weird shadows born
In the brains of crazy poets. Yet so real—
Such bitter mimicry! O, Madaline,
This is the very world in miniature:
We each wear dresses that become us not,
We each are maskers in a Carnival.
The spangles and the tinsel of our lives,
The soul in song, the jests above our wine,
Are pleasant lies that tell not what we are.
The Droll's at best a melancholy man;
His wit is only honey in a skull;
And though he glitter like a prism i' the light
His colors cannot hide the skeleton!
The Scholar is a cynic, and the Priest
A solemn epicurean in a cowl;
Philanthropy is politic: the Slave
Wears not such fetters as the Emperor.
And so, my love, Life plays at harlequin,
Smothers itself in ermine, or puts on
The icy front of virtue for effect.
A smile's a mask to hide a broken heart:
Fair words are masks, and all this blazoned world
Against the frozen opal in your ring,
There's no such mask as woman's tears may be!