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:
- In The Metropolitan Museum by Sara Teasdale
- Epitaph on Wm. Graham, Esq., of Mossknowe by Robert Burns
- Erin, Oh Erin by Thomas Moore
- Владимир Степанов – Мишка (Буква М)
- Some Kiss We Want by Rumi
- The Real Work by Wendell Berry
- Now List to my Morning’s Romanza. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Маяковский – Долг Украине
- Ella Mason And Her Eleven Cats by Sylvia Plath
- The Year’s Awakening by Thomas Hardy
- The Seed Market by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Ольга Седакова – Элегия осенней воды
- The Ballad Of Moll Magee by William Butler Yeats
- Robert Burns: Lines To A Gentleman,: Who had sent the Poet a Newspaper, and offered to continue it free of Expense.
- Alone, Looking for Blossoms Along the River by Tu Fu
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
- June Dreams, In January by Sidney Lanier
- Jones’s Porvate Argyment by Sidney Lanier
- Ireland. by Sidney Lanier
- In The Foam. by Sidney Lanier
- In Absence. by Sidney Lanier
- Hymns Of The Marshes. by Sidney Lanier
- From The Flats. by Sidney Lanier
- Corn by Sidney Lanier
- Control by Sidney Lanier
- Clover by Sidney Lanier
- Barnacles by Sidney Lanier
- Baby Charley. by Sidney Lanier
- At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
- An Evening Song. by Sidney Lanier
- Acknowledgment. by Sidney Lanier
- A Sunrise Song. by Sidney Lanier
- A Song Of The Future. by Sidney Lanier
- A Song Of Eternity In Time by Sidney Lanier
- A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L. by Sidney Lanier
- A Florida Sunday. by Sidney Lanier
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.