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 Great Palaces Of Versailles by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Teach Us To Number Our Days by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Primer by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Persephone, Falling by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Mushrooms by Rina Ferrarelli by Poetry In English
• Ludwig Von Beethoven’s Return To Vienna by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Lines Composed on the Body Politic by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Lady Freedom Among Us by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• I hear the roar of a Harley… by River Urke by Poetry In English
• Heart To Heart by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Hades’ Pitch by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Fifth Grade Autobiography by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Exit by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Dawn Revisited by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Chocolate by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
• Cavern in Paradise by Rita Odessa Villaruel by Poetry In English
• Broccoli by Rina Ferrarelli by Poetry In English
• Birth Of A Flower by Riss Ryker by Poetry In English
• American Smooth by Rita Dove by Poetry In English
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