A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)
Beauty, the Gift of Gifts, I give to thee.
Pleasure and love shall spring around thy feet
As through the lake the lotuses arise
Pinkly transparent and divinely sweet.
I give thee eyes aglow like morning stars,
Delicate brows, a mist of sable tresses,
That all the journey of thy lie may be
Lit up by love and softened by caresses.
For those who once were proud and softly bred
Shall, kneeling, wait thee as thou passest by,
They who were pure shall stretch forth eager hands
Crying, “Thy pity, Lord, before we die!”
And one shall murmur, “If the sun at dawn
Shall open and caress a happy flower,
What blame to him, although the blossom fade
In the full splendour of his noontide power?”
And one, “If aloes close together grow
It well may chance a plant shall wounded be,
Pierced by the thorntips of another’s leaves,
Thus am I hurt unconsciously by thee.”
For some shall die and many more shall sin,
Suffering for thy sake till seven times seven,
Because of those most perfect lips of thine
Which held the power to make or mar their heaven.
And though thou givest back but cruelty,
Their love, persistent, shall not heed nor care,
All those whose ears are fed with blame of thee
Shall say, “It may be so, but he was fair.”
Ay, those who lost the whole of youth for thee,
Made early and for ever, shamed and sad,
Shall sigh, re-living some sweet memory,
“Ah, once it was his will to make me glad.”
Thy nights shall be as bright as summer days,
The sequence of thy sins shall seem as duty,
Since I have given thee, Oh, Gift of Gifts!–
The pale perfection of unrivalled beauty.
A few random poems:
- Nor We Of Her To Him by Stevie Smith
- Омар Хайям – Бытует мнение, что счастье это дар
- Robert Burns: The Keekin’-Glass:
- Untitled I by Yunus Emre
- Anticipation poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Silence by Preeth Nambiar
- A man saw a ball of gold in the sky by Stephen Crane
- Robert Burns: Farewell Song To The Banks Of Ayr: “I composed this song as I conveyed my chest so far on my road to Greenock, where I was to embark in a few days for Jamaica. I meant it as my farewell dirge to my native land.”-R. B.
- Return Of The Heroes by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Ballad Of The Two Knights by Sara Teasdale
- Clouds by Rupert Brooke
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 16. I Envy not in any Moods poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Омар Хайям – О горе, горе сердцу, где жгучей страсти нет
- A Poem For Ashleigh (July) by Stevens Cadet
- I Know A Man by Yehuda Amichai
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Autumn Leaves by Thomas J Camp
- You by Thonda Sri Indrani
- You Will Forget! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Written at Stonehenge by Thomas Warton
- Words Of Love Forevermore by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Why? by Tiffany Ann Monroe
- While Summer Suns O’er the Gay Prospect Play’d by Thomas Warton
- What Is Woman But A Song! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- We are Africa by Timileyin Gabriel Olajuwon
- Virgule by Thomas Lux
- Verses on Sir Joshua Reynold’s Painted Window at New College, Oxford by Thomas Warton
- Vagueness Petrified by Thonda Sri Indrani
- Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw by Thomas Lux
- Town Planning Agencies by Tilottama Chatterjee
- Torn Shades by Thomas Lux
- The Road That Runs Beside The River by Thomas Lux
- The Pulling Away by Timothy Cole
- The Pleasures of Melancholy by Thomas Warton
- The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball by Thomas Lux
- The Mocking Bird by Timothy Thomas Fortune
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Violet Nicolson ( 1865 – 1904); otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory), was an English poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Laurence Hope, however she became known as Violet Nicolson. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author. She committed suicide and is buried in Madras, now Chennai, India.