Story By Lalla Ji The Priest

A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)

He loved the Plant with a keen delight,

A passionate fervour, strange to see,

Tended it ardently, day and night,

Yet never a flower lit up the tree.

The leaves were succulent, thick, and green,

And, sessile, out of the snakelike stem

Rose spine-like fingers, alert and keen,

To catch at aught that molested them.

But though they nurtured it day and night,

With love and labour, the child and he

Were never granted the longed-for sight

Of a flower crowning the twisted tree.

Until one evening a wayworn Priest

Stopped for the night in the Temple shade

And shared the fare of their simple feast

Under the vines and the jasmin laid.

He, later, wandering round the flowers

Paused awhile by the blossomless tree.

The man said, “May it be fault of ours,

That never its buds my eyes may see?

“Aslip it came from the further East

Many a sunlit summer ago.”

“It grows in our Jungles,” said the Priest,

“Men see it rarely; but this I know,

“The Jungle people worship it; say

They bury a child around its roots–

Bury it living:–the only way

To crimson glory of flowers and fruits.”

He spoke in whispers; his furtive glance

Probing the depths of the garden shade.

The man came closer, with eyes askance,

The child beside them shivered, afraid.

A cold wind drifted about the three,

Jarring the spines with a hungry sound,

The spines that grew on the snakelike tree

And guarded its roots beneath the ground.

. . . . . .

After the fall of the summer rain

The plant was glorious, redly gay,

Blood-red with blossom. Never again

Men saw the child in the Temple play.

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• Roar Shack poem – Alice Fulton by Poetry In English
• Physically Hearted by Poetry In English
• On The Conduct Of The World Seeking Beauty Against Government poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• Not my poem by Poetry In English
• My Sad Self poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• Mugging (I) poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• Millions of Us poem – Alice Notley by Poetry In English
• Meaning of silence-ness. by Poetry In English
• Making The Lion For All It’s Got — A Ballad poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• Kraj Majales (King Of May) poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• Kraj Majales (King Of May) poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• It Would poem – Alice Notley by Poetry In English
• Industrial Lace poem – Alice Fulton by Poetry In English
• I the People poem – Alice Notley by Poetry In English
• Human Tendency by Poetry In English
• Gift poem – Alice Notley by Poetry In English
• Feast of the Eyes by Poetry In English
• City of My Childhood by Poetry In English
• Cezanne’s Ports poem – Allen Ginsberg by Poetry In English
• Borow by Poetry In English

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