‘If You Call Me’ by Sarojini Naidu is a beautiful love poem, perfect for expressing your feelings towards a loved one this Valentine’s Day.
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian activist and feminist poet nicknamed ‘The Nightingale of India’ for her contribution to poetry. She was also the first Indian woman to be president of the Indian National Congress. Naidu’s poem If You Call Me is a short love song describing her intense feeling of adoration and her complete devotion to her lover.
If you call me I will come
Swifter, O my Love,
Than a trembling forest deer
Or a panting dove,
Swifter than a snake that flies
To the charmer’s thrall . . .
If you call me I will come
Fearless what befall.
If you call me, I will come
Swifter than desire,
Swifter than the lightning’s feet
Shod with plumes of fire.
Life’s dark tides may roll between,
Or Death’s deep chasms divide —
If you call me I will come
Fearless what betide.
—Sarojini Naidu, ‘If you call me I will come’
by Sarojini Naidu
A beautiful collection of some of Naidu’s most moving love poetry.
‘Mrs Naidu is not so well known; but she deserves to be, for although the bulk of her work is not so large, its quality, so far as it can be compared with that of her compatriot, will easily bear the test. It is, however, so different in kind, and reveals a genius so contrasting…’
