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:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Горийская симфония
- Николай Языков – Элегия (Поденщик, тяжело навьюченный дровами)
- Song—Willie brew’d a Peck o’ Maut by Robert Burns
- Владимир Британишский – Есть добрая, есть и дурная слава
- Омар Хайям – Чем пустыми мечтами себя донимать
- Doomes-Day: The Sixth Houre by William Alexander
- Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
- Going Back to School by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Eclogue:–A Ghost by William Barnes
- Николай Гумилев – Никогда не сделаю я так
- Epigram to Miss Ainslie in Church by Robert Burns
- complete text of the discovery of Kama Sutra by Raj Arumugam
- Mohini Chatterjee by William Butler Yeats
- Elijah by Peter Bardsley
- An Astrologer’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
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
- Three Songs Of Zahir U Din
- Thoughts Mahomed Akram
- Though In My Firmament Thou Wilt Not Shine
- This Month The Almonds Bloom At Kandahar
- There Is No Breeze To Cool The Heat Of Love
- The Window Overlooking The Harbour
- The Tom Toms
- The Temple Dancing Girl
- The Teak Forest
- The Singer
- The River Of Pearls At Fez Translation
- The Rice Was Under Water
- The Rice Boat
- The Regret Of The Ranee In The Hall Of Peacocks
- The Rao Of Ilore
- The Plains
- The Net Of Memory
- The Masters
- The Lute Player Of Casa Blanca
- The Lament Of Yasmini The Dancing Girl
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.