Maiden Ecstasy :: :: University of Virginia Library

Maiden Ecstasy

by Thomas Gordon Hake

Hake, Thomas Gordon (1809-1895)

THE ACTRESS.

THE CHILD OF ROMANCE.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

THE ACTRESS.

I

There lurks a subtle bane
In those dark eyes as 'twere an angel's sting,
While all would gaze again,
Would die to feel the ravishment they bring.
The film that they diffuse,
Glazing her soul's emotion, ofttimes swells
To tears that seem to muse
As with the glistening drops she works her spells.

II

'Tis told of her, that nursed
In early childhood nigh a poisonous stream,
She drew the drops accursed
That still within those cypress-lashes gleam,

Whence has her colour fled
And left a marble of her magic brow:
Yet her twain lips hang red
As doth the double cherry on the bough.

III

'Twas in a leafless land
That locusts stripped; where the furred monster trode;
Where sallow is the sand
And speckled like the belly of a toad.
But genius is her own;
Art, grace, the rapture, unto her belong
Who can her voice intone
To all the passions of a world in song.

IV

Her notes persuasive drop
From her ripe lips as from a mellow flute;
They linger, then they stop
And leave the ebb-flood of emotion mute.
First love she disenchants,
That lists to her unwarily and meets
In her its loftier wants,
As on the softened heart her witchery beats.

V

Comes she to move the dead
And paradise re-model on the earth,
Or here her light to shed
As if another planet gave her birth?
Even as her love transcends
All that can minister to man's desires,
Its wonder only ends
In thoughts of better worlds where rapture tires.

VI

It is no play that holds
Men's fate suspended in her fervid part:
The actor whom she folds
Within her arms is carried to her heart.
Even lovers who would pour
From their awed tongues dumb words they dare not speak,
Watch her, and mute no more
Turn their eyes from her and each other's seek.

VII

Her witchery is love:
She of her plenty moulds it to all moods
That passion knoweth of;
The love that finds its own, the love that broods.

But deep behind her smile
She counts the torments her fond art supplies,
And never, in her guile,
Withholds the gaze wherein infection lies.

VIII

Yet, precious seem the gifts
Of lips that tremble in their radiant place,
When her large eyes she lifts
And the love-shadow passes o'er her face.
Then diamond wreaths requite
Her flashing glance; pearls, ruby set, repay
That smile of borrowed light
Lit by a soul whose love is far away.

IX

But oh! that heart which loves
And is despised, while through in-reaching gloom
The vengeful spirit moves
Champing in bridled hate the bit of doom.
Even then her mirror told
More had her charms dropped from her in a day
Than in the years of old;
That time was there her face to disarray.

X

Her beauty feels its wane,
And lovers dare repel her false caress,
And change to them is gain
Now newer faces seize the hour's success.
Her eyes' empoisoning sting
At length harms not; the serpent-art is dead,
While faint applauses ring
O'er her whose lightnings once the tempest led.

XI

Long was her star's decline;
Lustrous as in its rise, she tarries still;
And who her art divine
Shall reach, and who the coming void re-fill?
But gentler youth is balm
To the strained stage, and to the hurtful scenes
Brings nature's welcome calm,
As Spring the fretful Winter kindly weans.

XII

As on the desert cast
Where her high life began; of arts disarmed;
One with the wintry blast,
She rails against the mighty she has charmed.

Yet shall not end her fame!
Not while she lives shall one her art displace,
But ages with her name
Shall ring till time all memory efface.

XIII

O'er the dim city street,
Where cloaked-up splendour hastes from many a door,
Falls down the galling sleet,
While crowds into the drama-palace pour.
Thither, oasis-decked
In flowers and drawn through desert-gusts, she brings
Her angry heart, self-wrecked;
And ere the tocsin-stroke her triumph rings.

XIV

Cold as a fate that stakes
Her being on her will, in her farewell
That dreaded part she takes,—
The matron who by her own dagger fell.
As in her greatest day
Are many terror-stricken and depart;
They feel it is no play;
That her fierce hand must turn against her heart.

XV

Why does the knife remain
Where it was plunged, but that the woman dies?
That jarring shriek of pain;
That fall; that body which dishevelled lies!
'Twas not the Actress braved
That hour, but natural tears of anguish wept:
Her soul's repose she craved,
And her last triumph won, she truly slept.