The Tom Toms

A poem by Violet Nicolson, Lawrence Hope, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (1865 – 1904)

Dost thou hear the tom-toms throbbing,

Like a lonely lover sobbing

For the beauty that is robbing him of all his life’s delight?

Plaintive sounds, restrained, enthralling,

Seeking through the twilight falling

Something lost beyond recalling, in the darkness of the night.

Oh, my little, loved Firoza,

Come and nestle to me closer,

Where the golden-balled Mimosa makes a canopy above,

For the day, so hot and burning,

Dies away, and night, returning,

Sets thy lover’s spirit yearning for thy beauty and thy love.

Soon will come the rosy warning

Of the bright relentless morning,

When, thy soft caresses scorning, I shall leave thee in the shade.

All the day my work must chain me,

And its weary bonds restrain me,

For I may not re-attain thee till the light begins to fade.

But at length the long day endeth,

As the cool of night descendeth

His last strength thy lover spendeth in returning to thy breast,

Where beneath the Babul nightly,

While the planets shimmer whitely,

And the fire-flies glimmer brightly, thou shalt give him love and rest.

Far away, across the distance,

The quick-throbbing drums’ persistence

Shall resound, with soft insistence, in the pauses of delight,

Through the sequence of the hours,

While the starlight and the flowers

Consecrate this love of ours, in the Temple of the Night.

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Poems in English 

• Consider This And In Our Time by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Common Life by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Christmas Oratio by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Carry Her Over the Water by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Canzone by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Calypso by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Base Words Are Uttered by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Autumn Song by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• August 1968 by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Atlantis by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• As We Like It by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• As the poets have mournfully sung by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Are You There? by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics by W. H. Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Academic Graffiti by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• A Walk After Dark by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• A New Year Greeting by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Continual Conversation With A Silent Man by Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens

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