Starlight

O beautiful Stars, when you see me go
    Hither and thither, in search of love,
Do you think me faithless, who gleam and glow
    Serene and fixed in the blue above?
    O Stars, so golden, it is not so.

But there is a garden I dare not see,
    There is a place where I fear to go,
Since the charm and glory of life to me
    The brown earth covered there, long ago.
    O Stars, you saw it, you know, you know.

Hither and thither I wandering go,
    With aimless haste and wearying fret;
In a search for pleasure and love?    Not so,
    Seeking desperately to forget.
    You see so many, O Stars, you know.

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

Two Songs by Sitara, of Kashmir

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

Lalila, to the Ferengi Lover

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

To the Hills!

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

The Tom-toms

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Flowers And Stars.

"Beloved! thou'rt gazing with thoughtful look
    On those flowers of brilliant hue,
Blushing in spring tide freshness and bloom,
    Glittering with diamond dew:
What dost thou read in each chalice fair,
    And what does each blossom say?
Do they not tell thee, my peerless one,
    Thou'rt lovelier far than they?"

"Not so - not so, but they whisper low
    That quickly will fade their bloom;
Soon will they withered lie on the sod,
    Ravished of all perfume;
They tell that youth and beauty below
    Are doomed, alas! to decay,
And I, like them, in life's flower and prime
    May pass from this earth away."

"Too sad thy thoughts! Look up at yon stars,
    That gleam in the sapphire skies;
Not clearer their radiance, best beloved,
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Reverie of Ormuz the Persian

Softly the feathery Palm-trees fade in the violet Distance,
Faintly the lingering light touches the edge of the sea,
Sadly the Music of Waves, drifts, faint as an Anthem's insistence,
Heard in the aisles of a dream, over the sandhills, to me.

Now that the Lights are reversed, and the Singing changed into sighing,
Now that the wings of our fierce, fugitive passion are furled,
Take I unto myself, all alone in the light that is dying,
Much of the sorrow that lies hid at the Heart of the World.

Sad am I, sad for your loss: for failing the charm of your presence,
Even the sunshine has paled, leaving the Zenith less blue.
Even the ocean lessens the light of its green opalescence,
Since, to my sorrow I loved, loved and grew weary of, you.

Why was our passion so fleetin...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Golden Eyes

Oh Amber Eyes, oh Golden Eyes!
    Oh Eyes so softly gay!
Wherein swift fancies fall and rise,
    Grow dark and fade away.
Eyes like a little limpid pool
    That holds a sunset sky,
While on its surface, calm and cool,
    Blue water lilies lie.

Oh Tender Eyes, oh Wistful Eyes,
    You smiled on me one day,
And all my life, in glad surprise,
    Leapt up and pleaded "Stay!"
Alas, oh cruel, starlike eyes,
    So grave and yet so gay,
You went to lighten other skies,
    Smiled once and passed away.

Oh, you whom I name "Golden Eyes,"
    Perhaps I used to know
Your beauty under other skies
    In lives lived long ago.
Perhaps I rowed with galley slaves,
    Whose labour never ceased,
To bring across Phoenician waves

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Spring Star.

    I.


Over the lamp-lit street,
Trodden by hurrying feet,
Where mostly pulse and beat
    Life's throbbing veins,
See where the April star,
Blue-bright as sapphires are,
Hangs in deep heavens far,
    Waxes and wanes.


Strangely alive it seems,
Darting keen, dazzling gleams,
Veiling anon its beams,
    Large, clear, and pure.
In the broad western sky
No orb may shine anigh,
No lesser radiancy
    May there endure.


Spring airs are blowing sweet:
Low in the dusky street
Star-beams and eye-beams meet.
    Rapt in his dreams,
All through the crowded mart
Poet with swift-stirred heart,
Passing beneath, must start,
    Thrilled by those gleams.


Naught doth he note anear,

Emma Lazarus

The Garden by the Bridge

The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary,
    The tigers rend alive their quivering prey
In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary,
    Too gorged with living food to fly away.

All night the hungry jackals howl together
    Over the carrion in the river bed,
Or seize some small soft thing of fur or feather
    Whose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.

I hear from yonder Temple in the distance
    Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,
Reiterated with a sad insistence
    Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.

Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,
    Are consummated in the river bed;
Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper
    To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

But yet, their lust, thei...

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

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