A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)
Sad is the Evening: all the level sand
Lies left and lonely, while the restless sea,
Tired of the green caresses of the land,
Withdraws into its own infinity.
But still more sad this white and chilly Dawn
Filling the vacant spaces of the sky,
While little winds blow here and there forlorn
And all the stars, weary of shining, die.
And more than desolate, to wake, to rise,
Leaving the couch, where softly sleeping still,
What through the past night made my heaven, lies;
And looking out across the window sill
See, from the upper window’s vantage ground,
Mankind slip into harness once again,
And wearily resume his daily round
Of love and labour, toil and strife and pain.
How the sad thoughts slip back across the night:
The whole thing seems so aimless and so vain.
What use the raptures, passion and delight,
Burnt out; as though they could not wake again.
The worn-out nerves and weary brain repeat
The question: Whither all these passions tend;–
This curious thirst, so painful and so sweet,
So fierce, so very short-lived, to what end?
Even, if seeking for ourselves, the Race,
The only immortality we know,–
Even if from the flower of our embrace
Some spark should kindle, or some fruit should grow,
What were the use? the gain, to us or it,
That we should cause another You or Me,–
Another life, from our light passion lit,
To suffer like ourselves awhile and die.
What aim, what end indeed? Our being runs
In a closed circle. All we know or see
Tends to assure us that a thousand Suns,
Teeming perchance with life, have ceased to be.
Ah, the grey Dawn seems more than desolate,
And the past night of passion worse than waste,
Love but a useless flower, that soon or late,
Turns to a fruit with bitter aftertaste.
Youth, even Youth, seems futile and forlorn
While the new day grows slowly white above.
Pale and reproachful comes the chilly Dawn
After the fervour of a night of love.
A few random poems:
- Hughley Steeple poem – A. E. Housman
- He’s on the porch by Yosa Buson
- Юлия Друнина – Здесь продают билеты на Парнас
- The Gardener LI: Then Finish the Last Song by Rabindranath Tagore
- Listening To Rwanda Genocide by Satish Verma
- Epitaph On An Infant. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Иннокентий Анненский – Леконт де Лиль. Над синим мраком ночи длинной
- Fragment—Her Flwoing Locks by Robert Burns
- A Kind of Life by Stanley Wilkin
- Наум Коржавин – От дурачеств, от ума ли
- At The Close Of The Canvass poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Rythm Upon Our Trusts by Michael McGovern
- April Is The Saddest Month by William Carlos Williams
- The Geography of the House by W H Auden
- Wisdom in Love by Lutfi Abdallah a.k.a Laso
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
- Ballade Of Dead Ladies poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Cleopatra’s Needle poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Blind Love poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Autumn poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Aucassin poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Amoureuse poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of His Books poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Dream poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Dead Ladies poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Dead Cities poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Cleopatra’s Needle poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Bookworm poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Blind Love poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Autumn poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Aucassin poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Against The Jesuits poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Auld Maitland poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Annan Water poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Alison Gross poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Aesop poem – Andrew Lang poems
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.