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:
- An Untold Tale by Shahida Latif
- The Ladies by Rudyard Kipling
- Константин Бальмонт – Черные вороны
- The Gardener IX: When I Go Alone at Night by Rabindranath Tagore
- Shimmering by Satish Verma
- A Cradle Song by William Butler Yeats
- The Old Maids Story
- My first seen by Osman cisse Hanif
- The Rival by Sylvia Plath
- Buying leeks by Yosa Buson
- Shillin’ a Day by Rudyard Kipling
- Casualty by Seamus Heaney
- polyphony_in_a_cathedral.html
- Владимир Высоцкий – Тюменская нефть
- At Queensferry by William Ernest Henley
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
- Алексей Жемчужников – Почему
- Алексей Жемчужников – Письмо к юноше о ничтожности
- Алексей Жемчужников – Пауза
- Алексей Жемчужников – Памятник Пушкину
- Алексей Жемчужников – Отголосок девятой симфонии Бетховена
- Алексей Жемчужников – Осенью в швейцарской деревне
- Алексей Жемчужников – О, жизнь
- Алексей Хомяков – Русская песня
- Алексей Хомяков – Ritterspruch – Richterspruch
- Алексей Хомяков – Раскаявшейся России
- Алексей Хомяков – Просьба
- Алексей Толстой – Войдем сюда; здесь меж руин
- Алексей Толстой – Вновь растворилась дверь
- Алексей Толстой – Вeсeнние чувства
- Алексей Толстой – Василий Шибанов
- Алексей Толстой – В совести искал я долго обвиненья
- Алексей Толстой – В колокол, мирно дремавший, с налета тяжелая бомба
- Алексей Толстой – В альбом (Стрелок, на той поляне)
- Алексей Толстой – Уж ты нива моя, нивушка
- Алексей Толстой – Уж ласточки, кружась, над крышей щебетали
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.