The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence - D. H. Lawrence

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to your gran’ marridge,

       I’m tellin’ ye.

       Nay, are ter scared o’ summat?

      In kep the thick black curtains drawn,

       Am I not tellin’ thee summat?

       Against the knockin’ of sevenfold dawn,

       An’ red-tipped candles from morn to morn

       Have dipped an’ danced upon thy brawn

       Till thou art worn—

       Oh, I have cost thee summat.

      Look in the mirror an’ see thy-sen,

       —What, I am showin’ thee summat.

       Wasted an’ wan tha sees thy-sen,

       An’ thy hand that holds the mirror shakes

       Till tha drops the glass and tha shudders when

       Thy luck breaks.

       Sure, tha’rt afraid o’ summat.

      Frail thou art, my saucy man,

       —Listen, I’m tellin’ thee summat.

       Tottering and tired thou art, my man,

       Tha came to say good-bye to me,

       An’ tha’s done it so well, that now I can

       Part wi’ thee.

       —Master, I’m givin’ thee summat.

      The Schoolmaster

       Table of Contents

      I

       A Snowy Day in School

       Table of Contents

      All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,

       Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silence

       Muffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that pass

       Down the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly—

      But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow light

       Have shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,

       Like full-blown flowers dimly shaking at the night,

       Like floating froth on an ebbing shore in the moon.

      Out of each star, dark, strange beams that disquiet:

       In the open depths of each flower, dark restless drops:

       Twin bubbles, shadow-full of mystery and challenge in the foam’s whispering riot:

       —How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes!

      The thick snow is crumpled on the roof, it plunges down

       Awfully. Must I call back those hundred eyes?—A voice

       Wakes from the hum, faltering about a noun—

       My question! My God, I must break from this hoarse silence

      That rustles beyond the stars to me.—There,

       I have startled a hundred eyes, and I must look

       Them an answer back. It is more than I can bear.

      The snow descends as if the dull sky shook

       In flakes of shadow down; and through the gap

       Between the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.

      The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and still

       With fair flakes settling down on it.—Beyond, the town

       Is lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.

      And all things are possessed by silence, and they can brood

       Wrapped up in the sky’s dim space of hoarse silence

       Earnestly—and oh for me this class is a bitter rood.

      II

       The Best of School

       Table of Contents

      The blinds are drawn because of the sun,

       And the boys and the room in a colourless gloom

       Of under-water float: bright ripples run

       Across the walls as the blinds are blown

       To let the sunlight in; and I,

       As I sit on the beach of the class alone,

       Watch the boys in their summer blouses,

       As they write, their round heads busily bowed:

       And one after another rouses

       And lifts his face and looks at me,

       And my eyes meet his very quietly,

       Then he turns again to his work, with glee.

      With glee he turns, with a little glad

       Ecstasy of work he turns from me,

       An ecstasy surely sweet to be had.

       And very sweet while the sunlight waves

       In the fresh of the morning, it is to be

       A teacher of these young boys, my slaves

       Only as swallows are slaves to the eaves

       They build upon, as mice are slaves

       To the man who threshes and sows the sheaves.

      Oh, sweet it is

       To feel the lads’ looks light on me,

       Then back in a swift, bright flutter to work,

       As birds who are stealing turn and flee.

      Touch after touch I feel on me

       As their eyes glance at me for the grain

       Of rigour they taste delightedly.

      And all the class,

       As tendrils reached out yearningly

       Slowly rotate till they touch the tree

       That they cleave unto, that they leap along

       Up to their lives—so they to me.

      So do they cleave and cling to me,

       So I lead them up, so do they twine

       Me up, caress and clothe with free

       Fine foliage of lives this life of mine;

       The lowest stem of this life of mine,

       The old hard stem of my life

       That bears aloft towards rarer skies

       My top of life, that buds on high

       Amid the high wind’s enterprise.

       They all do clothe my ungrowing life

       With a rich, a thrilled young clasp of life;

       A clutch of attachment, like parenthood,

       Mounts up to my heart, and I find it good.

      And I lift my head upon the troubled tangled world, and though the pain

       Of living my life were doubled, I still have this to comfort and sustain,

       I have such swarming sense of lives at the base of me, such sense of lives

       Clustering upon me, reaching up, as each after the other strives

       To

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