Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

“ Winnowed to suit thy tender brain,—is thine,
Thus Life shall find thee, not all unprepared
To face its callous, subtle cruelties.
Still,—it will profit little; I discern
Thou art of those whose love will prove their curse,
—Thou sayest thou lovest me, to thy delight?
Nay, little one, it is not love as yet.
Dear as thou art, and lovely, thou canst not love,
Thy later loves shall show the truth of this.
Ay, by some subtle signs I know full well
That thou art capable of that great love
Whose glory has the light of unknown heavens,
And makes hot Hell for those who harbour it. ”

“ Ah, what hast thou done with the Lover I loved,
⁠Who found me wanting, and thee so fair?
⁠Ahi, Yasmini, He found her fair!
Nay, nay, the greatest of all was thine;
⁠The love of the One whom I craved for so,
But much I doubt if thou couldst divine
⁠The Grace and Glory of Love, or know
The worth of the One whom thine arms embraced.
⁠I may misjudge thee, but who can tell?
So hard it is, for the one displaced,
⁠To weigh the worth of a rival's spell. ”

“ Thou wilt not have time to remember, before a new love-knot is tied,
The stranger who loved thee and left thee, who drifted away on the tide.
Two things I have found that are lovely, though most things are sullen and grey;
One: Peace—but what mortal has found him; and Passion—but when would he stay?
So I shall return to my River, and floating at ease on its breast,
Shall find, what Love never has given—a sense of most infinite rest. ”

“ When thou earnest fresh with the scent of some ruffled rose.
Ah, Wind, thou hast lain with the Desert,
⁠I know her savour well,
⁠And the spices wherewith she scents her breasts—
She who has known such countless lovers
Yet rarely borne a city among her sands—
⁠Thou comest as one from a night of love,
⁠Thy breath is broken and hard,—
⁠Bringing echoes of lonely things,
⁠Vast and cruel, that the soft and golden sands
⁠Buried beneath thin ripples so long ago. ”

“ Faintly sweet, like passionate birds
⁠Whose warbling wakens a sense of pain,—
Thrill through the nerves and make them quiver,—
⁠Heart, my heart, art thou happy again?
Here is beauty to feast thine eyes.
⁠Here is the land of thy long desire.
See how the delicate spirals rise
⁠Azure and faint from the wood-fed fire.
Where the cartmen wearily share their food,
⁠Ere they, by their bullocks, lie down to rest. ”

“ Let us escape from out these prison bars
⁠To gain the freedom of an open sky,
Thy soul and mine, alone beneath the stars,
⁠Intriguing danger, as in days gone by.
Nay; there is no returning, Yasin Khan.
⁠The white peaks ward the passes, as of yore,
The wind sweeps o'er the wastes of Khorasan;—
⁠But thou and I go thitherward no more.
Close, ah, too close, the bitter knowledge clings,
⁠We may not follow where my fancies yearn.
The years go hence, and wild and lovely things,
⁠Their own, go with them, never to return. ”

“ Hark to the frantic sobbing of the river,
⁠Wild to attain extinction in the sea.
All Nature blindly struggles to dissolve
In other forms and forces, thus to solve
The painful riddle of identity.
Ah, that my soul might lose itself in thee!
Yet, my Beloved One, wherefore seek I union,
⁠Since there is no such thing in all the world,—
Are not our spirits linked in close communion,—
⁠And on my lips thy clinging lips are curled? ”

“ But thine image is clear in the whirling waters—
⁠Ah, forgive—that I drag it there,
For it is so part of my very being
⁠That where I wander it too must fare.
Ah, I have given thee strange companions,
⁠To thee—so slender and chaste and cool—
But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty
⁠In all the mud of a miry pool
That holds the grace of its white reflection ”

“ Suffering or sorrow, fortune, feud, or care,—
Whate'er he find or feel,—he may not share.
Lonely we join the world, and we depart
⁠Even as lonely, having lived alone,
The breast that feeds us, the beloved one's heart,
⁠The lips we kiss,—or curse—alike unknown.
Ay, even these lips of thine, so often kissed,
What certitude have I that they exist? ”

“ Many shall faint with love of me
⁠And I shall slake their thirst,
But Fate has brought thee hither to-day
⁠That thou shouldst be the first.
Old, so old are the temple-walls,
⁠Love is older than they ”

“ Whose daughters are passionate, fierce and free.
I could not dwell by a rival's side,
I seek a bridegroom, as thou a bride.
The night she yieldeth her youth to thee,
Death shall take his pleasure in me. ”

“ The best and the worst of us all sink under—
⁠What I held passion and thou held'st lust—
What name will it find in a few more seasons,
⁠When we both dissolve in an equal dust?
If a God there be, and a God seems needed
⁠To make the beauty of things like thee,
He doubtless also, some careless moment,
⁠Mixed the forces that fashioned me.
Also He, for His own good reason—
⁠Though I care little how these things are—
Gave me thee, in those few brief midnights,
⁠And that one solace He never can mar. ”

“ Would I resign what the sin has brought me,
⁠Which I hold glory, and thou—thy shame.
I talk of sin in the usual fashion,
⁠But God knows what is a sin to me—
We love more fiercely or love more faintly—
⁠But I doubt if it matters how these things be. ”

“ Doubtless the night that my soul remembers
⁠Was a sin to thee, and thine only one.
Thou thinkest of it, if thou thinkest ever,
⁠As a crime committed, a deed ill done.
But for me, the broken, the desert-dweller,
⁠Following Life through its underways,—
I know if those midnights thou hadst not granted
⁠I had not lived through these after days. ”

“ The Barrack-square, the Engine-room,
⁠The pick-axe, ringing on the rocks,—
When tents are pitched and work is done,
⁠While restful twilight broods above,
By fresh-lit lamp, or dying sun,
⁠See in my songs how women love. ”

“ I could not if I would, Beloved, deceive thee.
⁠Wouldst thou not feel at once a feigned caress?
Yet, do not rise, I would not have thee leave me,
⁠My soul needs thine to share its loneliness.
Let the dim starlight, when the low clouds sunder,
⁠Silver the perfect outline of thy face. ”

“ Who, if she waver a moment, shall blame her?
⁠She is a flower, and love is a fire.
⁠Choti Tinchaurya syani hogayi! [1]
Give her the anklets, the rings and the necklace,
⁠Darken her eyelids with delicate Art,
Heighten the beauty, so youthful and fleckless,
⁠By the Gods favoured, oh, Bridegroom thou art! ”

“ Find me a little scented home
⁠Amongst thy loosened hair.
Give me a soft and secret place
⁠Against thine amber breast,
Where, hidden away from all mankind,
⁠My soul may come to rest.
Many a man has a secret dream
⁠Of where his life might be ”

“ This shall be right and licit in their eyes—
But it would break my heart, were I alive.
Yea, this will be; many will doubtless share
The rose whose bud has been my one delight,
And I shall not be there to shield my flower. ”

“ But the Place is waiting there; till the Hour shall show it,
And our footsteps, following Fate, find it and know it.
Where we shall worship the greatest of all the Gods in his pomp and power,—
I sometimes think that I shall not care to survive that hour! ”

“ Noon after noon I watched the Bulbuls build,
⁠And saw with hungry eyes the Sun-birds pair.
None came, and none will come; no use to wait,—
⁠Youth's fragrance dies, its tender light dies down.
I will arise, before it grows too late,
⁠And seek the noisy brilliance of the town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She scorns Old Age, whose tolerance
⁠And calm, well-balanced mind
(Knowing how crime is born of chance)
⁠Can pardon all mankind.
Yet she, alas! has all the power
⁠Of strength and place and gold,
Man's every act, through every hour,
⁠Is by her laws controlled. ”

“ For my Beloved, whose dying lips
⁠Implored a kiss—in vain!
⁠How could I know
⁠That thou wouldst go,
⁠Oh, Lallji, my desire?
⁠Too young thou art
⁠To lay thy heart
⁠Upon the Sandal pyre.
Thy wife awaits her coming child ”

“ Dost think that a man as sick as I can compass a woman's ease?
That the sons of a man who is like to me could ever find rest or peace?
Tell them to marry them where they will, if their longing be so sore,
Such are the things that all men seek, but I shall seek no more. ”

“ Once, as thou mournd'st thy lifeless brother's fate,
⁠The red tears falling from thy shattered wrist,
A spent Waziri, forceful still, in hate,
⁠Covered thy heart, ten paces off,—and missed!
Ahi, men thrust a worn and dinted sword
⁠Into a velvet-scabbarded repose ”

“ Of the bright relentless morning,
When, thy soft caresses scorning, I shall leave thee in the shade.
All the day my work must chain me,
And its weary bonds restrain me,
For I may not re-attain thee till the light begins to fade. ”

“ And ruddy camp-fires twinkled through the gloom
⁠Sweet with the fragrance from the Sinjib trees.
I had a friend who lay, condemned to death
⁠In gaol for murder, wholly innocent,
Yet caught in webs of luckless circumstance;—
⁠Thou know'st how lies, of good and ill intent,
Cluster like flies around a justice-court,
⁠Wheel within wheel, revolving screw on screw;—
But from his prison he escaped and fled,
⁠Keeping his liberty a night or two
Among the lonely hills, where, shackled still,
⁠He braved a village, seeking for a file
To loose his irons; alas! ”

“ Truly they fashion us wonderful things
⁠As the fancy of man demands.
But—to fly! to sail through the lucid air
⁠From crest to violet crest
Of these great grey mountains, quartz-veined and bare,
⁠Where the white clouds gather and rest. ”

“ For sake of these things I was still with joy
⁠When the silver coins were paid,
And they took me up to the Palace gates,
⁠Delighted and unafraid.
⁠Ah, the eyes of the Rao of Ilore,
⁠May never their brilliance fade! ”

“ Shivratri (the Night of Shiva)
(While the procession passed at Ramesram)
Nearer and nearer cometh the car
⁠Where the Golden Goddess towers,
Sweeter and sweeter grows the air
⁠From a thousand trampled flowers. ”

“ Till—great indeed was my unslaked thirst—
⁠I paused, I stooped, and I drank!
I went with my foe to the edge of the crater,—
⁠But one to return, we knew,—
The lava's heat had never been greater
⁠Than the ire between us two. ”

“ Entered the guards, brought by her messenger.
⁠Thus was he captured, slain, and on her breast
Soon shone the guerdon of her treachery,
⁠The price of blood; in gold made manifest.
I might have killed her? Brave men have died thus. ”

“ Across the cool, blue evenings,
⁠Throughout the burning days,
Persuasive and beguiling,
⁠He plays and plays and plays.
Ah, none may hear such music
⁠Resistant to its charms,
The household work grows weary,
⁠And cold the husband's arms. ”

“ He loathed, as he left, the embraces, the softness and scent of the place,
But, ah, if his night had been loveless, with no one to solace his need,
He never had written that sermon which men so devotedly read. ”

“ Let him take what pleasure, what love, he may,
⁠He, too, will suffer e'er life be spent,—
But Yasmini's soul has wandered away
⁠To join the Lover, who came,—and went!
⁠Ahi, Yasmini, He came,—and went!
↑ Indian women wear a small mirror in a ring on their thumbs. ”