A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)
The singer only sang the Joy of Life,
For all too well, alas! the singer knew
How hard the daily toil, how keen the strife,
How salt the falling tear; the joys how few.
He who thinks hard soon finds it hard to live,
Learning the Secret Bitterness of Things:
So, leaving thought, the singer strove to give
A level lightness to his lyric strings.
He only sang of Love; its joy and pain,
But each man in his early season loves;
Each finds the old, lost Paradise again,
Unfolding leaves, and roses, nesting doves.
And though that sunlit time flies all too fleetly,
Delightful Days that dance away too soon!
Its early morning freshness lingers sweetly
Throughout life’s grey and tedious afternoon.
And he, whose dreams enshrine her tender eyes,
And she, whose senses wait his waking hand,
Impatient youth, that tired but sleepless lies,
Will read perhaps, and reading, understand.
Oh, roseate lips he would have loved to kiss,
Oh, eager lovers that he never knew!
What should you know of him, or words of his?–
But all the songs he sang were sung for you!
A few random poems:
- Федор Тютчев – Как птичка, раннею зарей
- Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin
- Иван Варавва – Мать Кубань
- The Bayadere
- America To Great Britain by Washington Allston
- Владимир Корнилов – Отходная
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Монастыркам
- Song—She’s Fair and Fause by Robert Burns
- Илья Эренбург – Круг
- Alimony by Shel Silverstein
- Sonnet Iv
- We Are To Play The Game Of Death by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ольга Берггольц – Мы предчувствовали полыханье
- Composed While The Author Was Engaged In Writing A Tract Occasioned By The Convention Of Cintra by William Wordsworth
- How We Heard The Name
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
- Asparagus – A Tanka Poem
- Missile – A Tanka Poem
- The Language of William Dunbar
- A Ballad of Our Lady (Ave Maria, gracia plena)
- A Quick Ode to Spam, a Poem about Spam
- The Amendis to the Telyouris and Sowtaris for the Turnament maid on thame
- Ode to the Bat , a Sonnet
- Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin
- Love’s Fitfulness poem – Alfred Austin
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Lost poem – Alfred Austin
- Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire poem – Alfred Austin
- Let The Weary World Go Round poem – Alfred Austin
- Leszko The Bastard poem – Alfred Austin
- Is Life Worth Living? poem – Alfred Austin
- Inflexible As Fate poem – Alfred Austin
- In The Month When Sings The Cuckoo poem – Alfred Austin
- In The Forum poem – Alfred Austin
- In Sutton Woods poem – Alfred Austin
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.