Poems (Hooper)/Elsinore

by Lucy Hamilton Hooper

ELSINORE. A REMINISCENCE OF BOOTH'S HAMLET.

We sit in breathless silence,
 A spell-bound throng around,
Art's magic seals our senses
 From meaner sight and sound;
And though we sit, unmoving,
 The mimic scene before,
Our souls o'erleap the footlights
 And dwell in Elsinore.

O wondrous this enchantment,
 That gives th' Ideal life,
That wins us from the Real,
 Its cares, its toils, its strife!
Time's ocean, slowly ebbing,
 Leaves jewel-strewn the shore,
Gives back to light the glories
 Of Shakspeare's Elsinore.

And, lo! the Prince of Denmark
 Now meets our gaze the while,
With eyes whose saddest glances
 Are gladder than their smile,—
Sublime in mournful beauty,
 As when he trod of yore,
In majesty and mourning,
 The halls of Elsinore.

O rare and royal vision,
 That bids our eyes rejoice!
The soul of Shakspeare's shaping
 Hath found a form and voice.
And we, beholding, murmur,
 "Such was the guise he wore,
Who deathless lives in Shakspeare,
 Who died at Elsinore."

O manhood worn and wasted
 By anguish and despair!
O words whose mournful music
 Make sweet the haunted air!
We seem the painted phantoms,
 This th' unreal shore,
And there, beyond the footlights,
 The true world,—Elsinore.

The rest, "the rest is silence."
 The curtain's downward fall,
A fair Art-vision given
 To Mem'ry,—that is all.
And we, uprising, whisper,
 "Dull Life, to thee once more
We come, from charméd dwelling
 In Shakspeare's Elsinore."