Edwardian-era Stories

When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I pursue , And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay “thirteen two.” - Kipling.More or less in unison and more or less in tune the congregation sang,“Except the Lord build the house; their labour is but lost that build it. Except the Lord keep the city; the watchman waketh but in vain. It is but lost labour that ye rise up early,...

Like a cobra which has cast its coils spiralling conch-like three times… the enchantress of the world, slender as a lotus stem, bright as a lightning flash, lies sleeping, breathing softly in and out, murmuring poems in sweet metres, humming like a drunken bee in the petals of the lotus, how brightly her light shines. - From the Sarchakra-nirupanaAdeline had retired from lunch as soon as she had eaten, making excuses that...

III. Will you conquer my heart with your beauty, my soul going out from afar? Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar? - Kipling“Of course we never really have time to get away you know, Colonel Peck and I. He is ever so frightfully busy especially at this time of the year. What with government business in its usual state, all we can do is look forward to the occasional regimental or viceregal...

I. As I gazed....her countenance changed with her mind As she plann’d how to thrall me with beauty, and bind My soul to her charms, and her long tresses play’d From shade into shine and from shine into shade, Like a day in mid autumn, first fair, o how fair! With long snaky locks of the adder – black hair That clung round her neck……………  - Thomas Hood.  “Father, father, father, quickly, there’s an English officer at the do...