Women, Fairies & Love

Violet Nicholson (1865-1904) was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. Her poems often used imagery and symbols from the poets of the North-West Frontier of India and the Sufi poets of Persia. She was among the most popular romantic poets of the Edwardian era. Her poems are typically about unrequited love and loss.

Hira-Singh's Farewell to Burmah

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.