A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)
They lay the slender body down
With all its wealth of wetted hair,
Only a daughter of the town,
But very young and slight and fair.
The eyes, whose light one cannot see,
Are sombre doubtless, like the tresses,
The mouth’s soft curvings seem to be
A roseate series of caresses.
And where the skin has all but dried
(The air is sultry in the room)
Upon her breast and either side,
It shows a soft and amber bloom.
By women here, who knew her life,
A leper husband, I am told,
Took all this loveliness to wife
When it was barely ten years old.
And when the child in shocked dismay
Fled from the hated husband’s care
He caught and tied her, so they say,
Down to his bedside by her hair.
To some low quarter of the town,
Escaped a second time, she flew;
Her beauty brought her great renown
And many lovers here she knew,
When, as the mystic Eastern night
With purple shadow filled the air,
Behind her window framed in light,
She sat with jasmin in her hair.
At last she loved a youth, who chose
To keep this wild flower for his own,
He in his garden set his rose
Where it might bloom for him alone.
Cholera came; her lover died,
Want drove her to the streets again,
And women found her there, who tried
To turn her beauty into gain.
But she who in those garden ways
Had learnt of Love, would now no more
Be bartered in the market place
For silver, as in days before.
That former life she strove to change;
She sold the silver off her arms,
While all the world grew cold and strange
To broken health and fading charms.
Till, finding lovers, but no friend,
Nor any place to rest or hide,
She grew despairing at the end,
Slipped softly down a well and died.
And yet, how short, when all is said,
This little life of love and tears!
Her age, they say, beside her bed,
To-day is only fifteen years.
A few random poems:
- Ballad Of The Press-Gang At Shihao Village by Du Fu
- To a friend by Vinko Kalinić
- Alone by Yvor Winters
- Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack by Rudyard Kipling
- Elegy I. To Charles Deodati (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
- Fleckno, an English Priest at Rome poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- From Afar by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ad Magistrum Ludi by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Arabia by Walter de la Mare
- STONEWASHED by Satish Verma
- Aquatic Nocturne by Sylvia Plath
- Orchard by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Extracts From An Opera poem – John Keats poems
- Константин Батюшков – Мои пенаты
- English Poetry. Lucy Maud Montgomery. As the Heart Hopes. Люси Мод Монтгомери.
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 Dunciad: Book I. poem – Alexander Pope
- The Challenge: A Court Ballad poem – Alexander Pope
- The Basset-Table : An Eclogue poem – Alexander Pope
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
- Spring – The First Pastoral ; or Damon poem – Alexander Pope
- Song, by a Person of Quality poem – Alexander Pope
- Sappho to Phaon (Ovid Heroid XV) poem – Alexander Pope
- Sandys Ghost ; A Proper Ballad on the New Ovid’s Metamorphosis poem – Alexander Pope
- Prayer of St. Francis Xavier poem – Alexander Pope
- On the Countess of Burlington Cutting Paper poem – Alexander Pope
- On Seeing the Ladies Crux-Easton Walk in the Woods by the Grotto. poem – Alexander Pope
- On Mr. Gay poem – Alexander Pope
- On His Grotto at Twickenham poem – Alexander Pope
- On Colley Cibber poem – Alexander Pope
- On Certain Ladies poem – Alexander Pope
- On a Fan of the Author’s Design poem – Alexander Pope
- On a Certain Lady at Court poem – Alexander Pope
- Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day poem – Alexander Pope
- Occasioned By Some Verses of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham poem – Alexander Pope
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.