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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• The Reformers by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Recall by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Rabbi’s Song by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Quesion by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Queen’s Men by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Puzzler by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Prodigal Son by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Pro-Consuls by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Prayer of Miriam Cohen by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Law of the Jungle by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Last Rhyme of True Thomas by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Last of the Light Brigade by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Last Department by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Land by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Ladies by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Kingdom by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Jester by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
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