Story By Lalla Ji The Priest

A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)

He loved the Plant with a keen delight,

A passionate fervour, strange to see,

Tended it ardently, day and night,

Yet never a flower lit up the tree.

The leaves were succulent, thick, and green,

And, sessile, out of the snakelike stem

Rose spine-like fingers, alert and keen,

To catch at aught that molested them.

But though they nurtured it day and night,

With love and labour, the child and he

Were never granted the longed-for sight

Of a flower crowning the twisted tree.

Until one evening a wayworn Priest

Stopped for the night in the Temple shade

And shared the fare of their simple feast

Under the vines and the jasmin laid.

He, later, wandering round the flowers

Paused awhile by the blossomless tree.

The man said, “May it be fault of ours,

That never its buds my eyes may see?

“Aslip it came from the further East

Many a sunlit summer ago.”

“It grows in our Jungles,” said the Priest,

“Men see it rarely; but this I know,

“The Jungle people worship it; say

They bury a child around its roots–

Bury it living:–the only way

To crimson glory of flowers and fruits.”

He spoke in whispers; his furtive glance

Probing the depths of the garden shade.

The man came closer, with eyes askance,

The child beside them shivered, afraid.

A cold wind drifted about the three,

Jarring the spines with a hungry sound,

The spines that grew on the snakelike tree

And guarded its roots beneath the ground.

. . . . . .

After the fall of the summer rain

The plant was glorious, redly gay,

Blood-red with blossom. Never again

Men saw the child in the Temple play.

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• The Tree Of Knowledge by Abraham Cowley
• The Thraldom by Abraham Cowley
• The Thief by Abraham Cowley
• The Spring by Abraham Cowley
• The Request by Abraham Cowley
• The Praise Of Pindar In Imitation Of Horace His Second Ode Book 4 by Abraham Cowley
• The Parting by Abraham Cowley
• The Motto by Abraham Cowley
• The Innocent Ill by Abraham Cowley
• The Heart Breaking by Abraham Cowley
• The Grasshopper by Abraham Cowley
• The Given Love by Abraham Cowley
• The Given Heart by Abraham Cowley
• The Epicure by Abraham Cowley
• The Despair by Abraham Cowley
• The Chronicle by Abraham Cowley
• The Change by Abraham Cowley
• Sport by Abraham Cowley
• Resolved To Be Loved by Abraham Cowley
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