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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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
- The Gardener XIX: You Walked by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XIII: I Asked Nothing by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener X: Let Your Work Be, Bride by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXXI: Why Do You Whisper So Faintly by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXVI: The Fair Was On by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXV: At Midnight by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXVIII: None Lives For Ever, Brother by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXIX: I Hunt for the Golden Stag by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXIV: I Spent My Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LIX: O Woman by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LI: Then Finish the Last Song by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener IX: When I Go Alone at Night by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener IV: Ah Me by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Further Bank by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Flower-School by Rabindranath Tagore
- The First Jasmines by Rabindranath Tagore
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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.