Shivaratri (The Night of Shiva)
While the procession passed at Rameswaram
by Laurence Hope

Nearer and nearer cometh the car
Where the Golden Goddess towers,
Sweeter and sweeter grows the air
From a thousand trampled flowers.
We two rest in the Temple shade
Safe from the pilgrim flood,
This path of the Gods in olden days
Ran royally red with blood.

Louder and louder and louder yet
Throbs the sorrowful drum–
That is the tortured world's despair,
Never a moment dumb.
Shriller and shriller shriek the flutes,
Nature's passionate need–
Paler and paler grow my lips,
And still thou bid'st them bleed.

Deeper and deeper and deeper still,
Never a pause for pain–
Darker and darker falls the night
That golden torches stain.
Closer, ah! closer, and still more close,
Till thy soul reach my soul–
Further, further, out on the tide
From the shores of self-control.

Glowing, glowing, to whitest heat,
Thy feverish passions burn,
Fiercer and fiercer, cruelly fierce,
To thee my senses yearn.
Fainter and fainter runs my blood
With desperate fight for breath–
This, my Beloved, thou sayest is Love,
Or I should have deemed it Death!

Adela Florence Cory 'Violet' Nicholson who wrote poetry under the pen name of Laurence Hope was a British native settled in India temporarily in some respect as her father was a colonel at Lahore and her husband too was posted at Bombay. But when he passed away accidentally due to an illness, she was almost 39 years of age. Soon after the death of her husband she committed suicide. Had she been alive, it would have been great and the poems which have come down to us are mostly about India and Indian references taking us to Lahore and its suburbs or beyond, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. It is Madras where she has been laid to rest. Some of her poems have been set to music.

The present poem deals with a Shivaratri procession and that too of the South Indian Rameswaram Shiva temple and the festivity connected with mythically and historically and the legends encompassing in on a massive way. The car is coming to where the Golden Goddess towers are. Sweeter is the air smacking of sweet fragrance reeking from the flowers trampled by feet or crushed over, and the main roadway strewn with flowers. There is no way out of. The campuses and roads are packed with crowds and there is nothing to let out. There is no way rather than being in the temple shade. During the days of royalty and reigning kings, they used to walk down, take the same route as for to anoint or re-orient the deities.

Louder is the atmosphere and the drumbeats seem to be sorrowful. The flutes are shrieking just as a shrill. The drum throbs in a louder way and appears to be sorrowful expression about the tortured world’s despair. Shriller shriek the flutes and paler appear to be the lips thirsty for. Why does the Lord make it bleed?

Deeper and deeper is the dark night still with the torches mesmerizing and with it the thirst for meeting burning within and she is feeling it thirsty and restless. You come, do come closer to, lover! How to be with? How will her soul come closer to mingle with the self of the lover?

Why does her love make her wait for or keep her yearning? Why are the passions so unruly and overriding? She does not know. How to rein in the impassioned heart? Should she now gasp for breath? Or should she call it death? When will this wait end? When will the rituals consummate?

The deities are taken in separate chariots during a procession around the streets of the temple site followed by a mammoth of crowds