By ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.
Adah Isaacs Menken was one of those restless spirits who suffer from their own unsatisfying versatility. Daughter of a Spanish Jew and a Frenchwoman, she was born, Dolores Adios Fuertes, near New Orleans, June 15, 1835. At the age of seven years she made a successful stage appearance as a dancer. She became very popular, especially at Havana, where she was known as "Queen of the Plaza." At twenty she was married to Alexander Isaacs Menken, at Galveston, Texas, retired from the stage, and published a volume of poems, "Memories." Divorced from her husband, she returned to the stage in 1858, but soon abandoned it to study sculpture.
In 1859 she was married to John C. Heenan, the pugilist, from whom she was divorced three years later. Twice again she was married before her death, at Paris, August 10, 1868. In the tragedy of misdirected genius she filled a pathetic rôle.
Where is the promise of my years
Once written on my brow—
Ere errors, agonies, and fears
Brought with them all that speak 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.
And see Life's riven fane
Just where it fell—amid the jeers
Of scornful lips, whose moaning sneers
Forever hiss within my ears
To break the sleep of pain.
I can but own my life is vain,
A desert void of peace;
I missed the goal I sought to gain—
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls fame's fever in the brain,
And bids earth's tumult cease.
Myself? Alas for theme so poor!—
A theme but rich in fear;
I stand a wreck on Error's shore,
A specter not within the door,
A homeless shadow evermore,
An exile lingering here!