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Audiobook edition · 2 h 31 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What remains when love burns fiercely, then leaves only longing behind?
In India's Love Lyrics, Laurence Hope gives desire, parting, memory, and death the shape of short, musical poems. Lovers speak in imagined voices of Indian men and women. Gardens, courtyards, rivers, and camps under a hot sky frame their feelings. Love brings almost reckless devotion, while absence leaves questions about where a beloved is now.
Laurence Hope is the pen name of Adela Florence Nicolson, an Englishwoman who lived in British India. Her poems bring passion and loss into strong rhythms, rhyme, and songlike refrains. These are highly colored visions, not a realistic portrait of India. Read them with an ear for their music and an awareness of the voices the poet chooses.
What you’ll discover
- Love without restraint Meet speakers whose devotion gives passion the force of an all-consuming fire.
- The ache of absence Follow the questions that remain when a loved person is no longer near.
- Gardens beneath hot skies Enter gardens, courtyards, rivers, and camps where vivid settings frame intense feeling.
- Verse with a pulse Hear strong rhythms, rhymes, and repeated sounds gather into the movement of song.
- A poet's imagined voices Explore how Hope speaks through lovers while keeping her perspective in view.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who love romantic and passionate verse, songs of longing and farewell, and richly coloured scenes of temples, deserts, rivers and gardens. It also rewards anyone who enjoys small stories in poems that sound lovely aloud.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A poet speaks through many borrowed voices
- Love can be offered with nothing asked back
- Temples and gardens set the stage for desire
- One night of joy can outlast the lover
- Jealousy and violence break through the tenderness
- Women and children tell the darker stories
- Doubt, fate and nature shadow every embrace
- Refrains, sounds and cross-cultural meetings reward reading aloud
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I canti d’amore dell’India
by Laurence Hope · 1901
A lover sharpens his lord's sword and anticipates his own death in the opening poem, and passion grows from there.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to readItaliano
Learn a language with medium classicsSpagnoloFranceseTedescoItalianoGiapponesePortogheseIngleseHow we measure levels
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In short
What does desire sound like when it is sung under a desert moon? This book answers with dozens of short poems, and the first is a lover's farewell to the lord he loves.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A poet speaks through many borrowed voices
The first thing to know is that the poet hides. Laurence Hope was the pen name of an Englishwoman who spent years in India with her husband. She did not write about herself in plain terms. She gave her feelings to invented speakers and let them talk.
The cast is large. Zahir-u-din sings of longing and frustrated desire. Mahomed Akram is a traveller haunted by a lost love. Taj Mahomed is a soldier with a sword and a jewelled mistress. Women speak too, among them Zira, Yasmini and Sitara of Kashmir.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1901
- Language
- Italiano
- Reading time
- 1 h 40 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Hope, Laurence. India's Love Lyrics. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/indias-love-lyrics.
Hope, L. (2026). India's love lyrics. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/indias-love-lyrics (Original work published 1901)
Hope, Laurence. India's Love Lyrics. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/indias-love-lyrics.
@book{hope2026indias,
author = {Hope, Laurence},
title = {India's Love Lyrics},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/indias-love-lyrics},
note = {First published 1901}
}
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What is India's Love Lyrics about?
It is a collection of short poems about desire, longing, jealousy, farewell and loss, spoken by many invented speakers in India, Afghanistan and beyond. Soldiers, queens and other lovers speak about desire and loss, sometimes recalling several loves and what they cost.
Who was Laurence Hope?
Laurence Hope was the pen name of Adela Florence Nicolson, an Englishwoman who lived in India with her army officer husband. She died in 1904. Using a male name, she wrote many poems in the voices of men and women of the East.
What is Kashmiri Song?
Kashmiri Song is the best-known poem in the collection. A speaker remembers pale hands beside the Shalimar garden that gave rapture and then waved farewell. The poem was later set to music and sung widely.
The author
Laurence Hope
1865–1904 · English poet
Laurence Hope was the pen name of Adela Florence Nicolson, an English poet born in Bristol in 1865. She moved to India in 1881 and later married Malcolm Nicolson, an army officer. Her poetry collection India's Love Lyrics appeared in 1901. She died in Madras, India, in 1904.
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