“India’s Love Lyrics, Including The Garden of Kama”, collected & arranged in verse by Laurence Hope

 

181 pages, Dodd, Mead and Company

I don’t remember where I picked-up India’s Love Lyrics by Laurence Hope (more on that later), but I bet I kept it for its age, as 2025 is its 100^th birthday. Originally copyrighted in 1902 (a mere two years before Hope died in Madras, India, aged only 39), my edition comes from 1925 and is missing the front cover and the first couple of pages have been wrenched from the spine – but its what’s been hand-written on those pages that is of interest: “With best love, Josie, May 29^th, 1926”. I don’t know who Josie was nor to whom her gift was meant for. As to how it ultimately ended up in my possession that, too, is a mystery, never to be learned. I just hope to whomever Josie gave these poems to was worth it.

Right, let’s get on with it: the English poet Laurence Hope was in fact the English poet Violet Nicolson, or Adela Florence Nicolson, née Cory, who was introduced to Indian food, customs and poetry by her husband, Colonel Malcolm Hassels Nicolson. These poems were first published in 1901 as supposed translations and arrangements of old Indian poems, rather than as the original works they were later revealed to be. Nicolson’s output would prove to be small and doubly tragic when her husband died in a prostate operation; Adela, who had been prone to depression since childhood, committed suicide by poisoning herself at the age of 39 on October 4^th, 1904 in Madras, where she was also buried. Too few works in too little time.

As should be of no surprise from a woman who lived in India for much of her life, her poems often employ the imagery and symbols of the poets of the Northwest Frontier of India, along with the Sufi poets of neighboring Iran. Her poems are typically about unrequited love and loss, as well as the death that followed such an unhappy state of affairs. Many of them have an air of autobiography or confession; indeed, it was apparent to some of her contemporaries that her poems were deeply personal, even confessional, despite her use of pseudonyms and fictionalized authors. Nicolson would prove to be among the most popular romantic poets of the Edwardian era, an indication as to just how culturally ebullient this society really was.

This is all well and good, but just what am I talking about here? Well…this, “To the Unattainable”:

 

Oh, that my blood were water, thou athirst,

And thou and I in some far Desert land,

How would I shed it gladly, if but first

It touched thy lips, before it reached the sand.

 

Once, – Ah, the Gods were good to me, – I threw

Myself upon a poison snake, that crept

Where my Beloved – a lesser love we knew

Than this which now consumes me wholly – slept.

 

But thou; Alas, what can I do for thee?

By Fate, and thine own beauty, set above

The need of all or any aid from me,

Too high for service, as too far for love.

I have no ear for poetry, but each and every one of these poems spoke to me. So maybe that is why I have held onto my battered and beaten copy of India’s Love Lyrics.