A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)
I slept upon the Rice-boat
That, reef protected, lay
At anchor, where the palm-trees
Infringe upon the bay.
The windless air was heavy
With cinnamon and rose,
The midnight calm seemed waiting,
Too fateful for repose.
One joined me on the Rice-boat
With wild and waving hair,
Whose vivid words and laughter
Awoke the silent air.
Oh, beauty, bare and shining,
Fresh washen in the bay,
One well may love by moonlight
What one would not love by day!
Above among the cordage
The night wind hardly stirred,
The lapping of the ripples
Was all the sound we heard.
Love reigned upon the Rice-boat,
And Peace controlled the sea,
The spirit’s consolation,
The senses’ ecstasy.
Though many things and mighty
Are furthered in the West,
The ancient Peace has vanished
Before To-day’s unrest.
For how among their striving,
Their gold, their lust, their drink,
Shall men find time for dreaming
Or any space to think?
Think not I scorn the Science
That lightens human pain;
Though man’s reliance often
Is placed on it in vain.
Maybe the long endeavour,
The patience and the strife,
May some day solve the riddle,
The Mystery of Life.
Perchance I do not value
Things Western as I ought,
The trains,–that take us, whither?
The ships,–that reach, what port?
To me it seems but chaos
Of greed and haste and rage,
The endless, aimless, motion
Of squirrels in a cage.
Here, where some ruined temple
In solitude decays,
With carven walls still hallowed
With prayers of bygone days,
Here, where the coral outcrops
Make “flowers of the sea,”
The olden Peace yet lingers,
In hushed serenity.
Ah, silent, silver moonlight,
Whose charm impartial falls
On tanks of sacred water
And squalid city walls,
Whose mystic whiteness hallows
The lowest and the least,
To thee men owe the glamour
That draws them to the East.
And as this azure water,
Unflecked hy wave or foam,
Conceals in its tranquillity
The dreaded white shark’s home,
So if love be illusion
I ask the dream to stay,
Content to love by moonlight
What I might not love by day.
A few random poems:
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- With A Copy Of Shakespeares Sonnets On Leaving College
- The Hero by Rabindranath Tagore
- Epistle to John Maxwell, Esq., of Terraughty by Robert Burns
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- Poems On Life by Rabindranath Tagore
- Robert Burns: The Slave’s Lament:
- In The New Sun by Philip Levine
- Владимир Луговской – Пепел
- Pigeon Haiku by Violet Uram
- In Honour Of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
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- The Cactus
- Николай Карамзин – Берег
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
- Psalm 08 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 07 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 05 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 04 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 03 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 02 poem – John Milton poems
- Psalm 01 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The Third Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The Second Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Regained: The First Book poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 12 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 11 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 10 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 09 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 08 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 07 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Paradise Lost: Book 05 poem – John Milton 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.