Malay Song

The Stars await, serene and white,
    The unarisen moon;
Oh, come and stay with me to-night,
    Beside the salt Lagoon!

My hut is small, but as you lie,
    You see the lighted shore,
And hear the rippling water sigh
    Beneath the pile-raised floor.

No gift have I of jewels or flowers,
    My room is poor and bare:
But all the silver sea is ours,
    And all the scented air

Blown from the mainland, where there grows
    Th' "Intriguer of the Night,"
The flower that you have named Tube rose,
    Sweet scented, slim, and white.

The flower that, when the air is still
    And no land breezes blow,
From its pale petals can distil
    A phosphorescent glow.

I see your ship at anchor ride;
    Her "captive lightning" shine.
Before she takes to-morrow's tide,
    Let this one night be mine!

Though in the language of your land
    My words are poor and few,
Oh, read my eyes, and understand,
    I give my youth to you!

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Adela Florence Nicolson, better known by her pen name Laurence Hope, was an English poet who gained popularity in the early 20th century for her verse inspired by Indian themes and settings. She was born on April 9, 1865, in Stoke Bishop, England. Nicolson's work is often associated with themes of love, longing, and the exoticism of the East. She tragically ended her own life on October 4, 1904. Despite her short life, her poetry left a lasting impact and continues to be read and appreciated.

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Atavism

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

My Paramour was Loneliness

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

The Lament of Yasmini, the Dancing-Girl

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

Hira-Singh's Farewell to Burmah

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

English

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Second Song: The Girl from Baltistan

    Throb, throb, throb,
Far away in the blue transparent Night,
On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
She hears the sound of her lover's nearing boat
    Afar, afloat
On the river's loneliness, where the Stars are the only light;
    Hear the sound of the straining wood
    Like a broken sob
    Of a heart's distress,
    Loving misunderstood.

She lies, with her loose hair spent in soft disorder,
On a silken sheet with a purple woven border,
Every cell of her brain is latent fire,
Every fibre tense with restrained desire.
    And the straining oars sound clearer, clearer,
    The boat is approaching nearer, nearer;
    "How to wait through the moments' space
    Till I see the light of my lover's face?"

    Throb, throb, thro...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Sea Song

Against the planks of the cabin side,
    (So slight a thing between them and me,)
The great waves thundered and throbbed and sighed,
    The great green waves of the Indian sea!

Your face was white as the foam is white,
    Your hair was curled as the waves are curled,
I would we had steamed and reached that night
    The sea's last edge, the end of the world.

The wind blew in through the open port,
    So freshly joyous and salt and free,
Your hair it lifted, your lips it sought,
    And then swept back to the open sea.

The engines throbbed with their constant beat;
    Your heart was nearer, and all I heard;
Your lips were salt, but I found them sweet,
    While, acquiescent, you spoke no word.

So straight you lay in your narrow bert...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Song of Jasoda

Had I been young I could have claimed to fold thee
For many days against my eager breast;
But, as things are, how can I hope to hold thee
Once thou hast wakened from this fleeting rest?

Clear shone the moonlight, so that thou couldst find me,
Yet not so clear that thou couldst see my face,
Where in the shadow of the palms behind me
I waited for thy steps, for thy embrace.

What reck I now my morning life was lonely?
For widowed feet the ways are always rough.
Though thou hast come to me at sunset only,
Still thou hast come, my Lord, it is enough.

Ah, mine no more the glow of dawning beauty,
The fragrance and the dainty gloss of youth,
Worn by long years of solitude and duty,
I have no bloom to offer thee in truth.

Yet, since these eyes o...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Ojira, to Her Lover

I am waiting in the desert, looking out towards the sunset,
And counting every moment till we meet.
I am waiting by the marshes and I tremble and I listen
Till the soft sands thrill beneath your coming feet.

Till I see you, tall and slender, standing clear against the skyline
A graceful shade across the lingering red,
While your hair the breezes ruffle, turns to silver in the twilight,
And makes a fair faint aureole round your head.

Far away towards the sunset I can see a narrow river,
That unwinds itself in red tranquillity;
I can hear its rippled meeting, and the gurgle of its greeting,
As it mingles with the loved and long sought sea.

In the purple sky above me showing dark against the starlight,
Long wavering flights of homeward birds fly low,
They...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Hira-Singh's Farewell to Burmah

On the wooden deck of the wooden Junk, silent, alone, we lie,
With silver foam about the bow, and a silver moon in the sky:
A glimmer of dimmer silver here, from the anklets round your feet,
Our lips may close on each other's lips, but never our souls may meet.

For though in my arms you lie at rest, your name I have never heard,
To carry a thought between us two, we have not a single word.
And yet what matter we do not speak, when the ardent eyes have spoken,
The way of love is a sweeter way, when the silence is unbroken.

As a wayward Fancy, tired at times, of the cultured Damask Rose,
Drifts away to the tangled copse, where the wild Anemone grows;
So the ordered and licit love ashore, is hardly fresh and free
As this light love in the open wind and salt of the outer sea.<...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Reverie Of Mahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank

The Desert is parched in the burning sun
And the grass is scorched and white.
But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
We are camping here to-night.
    I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
    While the cadenced water evenly falls,
    And a peacock out of the Jungle calls
    To another, on yonder tomb.
    Above, half seen, in the lofty gloom,
    Strange works of a long dead people loom,
Obscene and savage and half effaced -
An elephant hunt, a musicians' feast -
And curious matings of man and beast;
What did they mean to the men who are long since dust?
    Whose fingers traced,
    In this arid waste,
These rioting, twisted, figures of love and lust.

Strange, weird things that no man may say,
Things Humanity hides away; -
  ...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson