T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Afridi Love
By Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Nicolson) (1865–1904)(From India’s Love Lyrics, 1902) SINCE, Oh, Beloved, you are not even faithful | |
| To me, who loved you so, for one short night, | |
| For one brief space of darkness, though my absence | |
| Did but endure until the dawning light; | |
| Since all your beauty—which was mine—you squandered | 5 |
| On that which now lies dead across your door; | |
| See here this knife, made keen and bright to kill you. | |
| You shall not see the sun rise any more. | |
| Lie still! Lie still! In all the empty village | |
| Who is there left to hear or heed your cry? | 10 |
| All are gone down to labour in the valley, | |
| Who will return before your time to die? | |
| No use to struggle; when I found you sleeping, | |
| I took your hands and bound them to your side, | |
| And both these slender feet, too apt at straying, | 15 |
| Down to the cot on which you lie are tied. | |
| Lie still, Beloved; that dead thing lying yonder, | |
| I hated and I killed, but love is sweet, | |
| And you are more than sweet to me, who love you, | |
| Who decked my eyes with dust from off your feet. | 20 |
| Give me your lips; Ah, lovely and disloyal | |
| Give me yourself again; before you go | |
| Down through the darkness of the Great, Blind Portal, | |
| All of life’s best and basest you must know. | |
| Erstwhile Beloved, you were so young and fragile | 25 |
| I held you gently, as one holds a flower: | |
| But now, God knows, what use to still be tender | |
| To one whose life is done within an hour? | |
| I hurt? What then? Death will not hurt you, dearest, | |
| As you hurt me, just for a single night, | 30 |
| You call me cruel, who laid my life in ruins | |
| To gain one little moment of delight. | |
| Look up, look out, across the open doorway | |
| The sunlight streams. The distant hills are blue. | |
| Look at the pale, pink peach trees in our garden, | 35 |
| Sweet fruit will come of them;—but not for you. | |
| The fair, far snow, upon those jagged mountains | |
| That gnaw against the hard blue Afghan sky | |
| Will soon descend, set free by summer sunshine. | |
| You will not see those torrents sweeping by. | 40 |
| The world is not for you. From this day forward, | |
| You must lie still alone; who would not lie | |
| Alone for one night only, though returning | |
| I was, when earliest dawn should break the sky. | |
| There lies my lute, and many strings are broken, | 45 |
| Some one was playing it, and some one tore | |
| The silken tassels round my Hookah woven; | |
| Some one who plays, and smokes, and loves, no more! | |
| Some one who took last night his fill of pleasure, | |
| As I took mine at dawn! The knife went home | 50 |
| Straight through his heart! God only knows my rapture | |
| Bathing my chill hands in the warm red foam. | |
| And so I pain you? This is only loving, | |
| Wait till I kill you! Ah, this soft, curled hair! | |
| Surely the fault was mine, to love and leave you | 55 |
| Even a single night, you are so fair. | |
| Cold steel is very cooling to the fervour | |
| Of over passionate ones, Beloved, like you. | |
| Nay, turn your lives to mine. Not quite unlovely | |
| They are as yet, as yet, though quite untrue. | 60 |
| What will your brother say, to-night returning | |
| With laden camels homewards to the hills, | |
| Finding you dead, and me asleep beside you, | |
| Will he awake me first before he kills? | |
| For I shall sleep. Here on the cot beside you | 65 |
| When you, my Heart’s Delight, are cold in death. | |
| When your young heart and restless lips are silent, | |
| Grown chilly, even beneath my burning breath. | |
| When I have slowly drawn my knife across you, | |
| Taking my pleasure as I see you swoon, | 70 |
| I shall sleep sound, worn out by love’s last fervour, | |
| And then, God grant your kinsmen kill me soon! | |