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

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my belly from the breast-lights above.

       Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,

       Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once,

       goes kissing me glad.

       And the soul of the wind and my blood compare

       Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in

       liberty, drifts on and is sad.

       Oh but the water loves me and folds me,

       Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as

       though it were living blood,

       Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,

       Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely

       good.

      Study

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      Somewhere the long mellow note of the blackbird

       Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel,

       Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back,

       Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll

       All be sweet with white and blue violet.

       (Hush now, hush. Where am I?—Biuret—) On the green wood's edge a shy girl hovers From out of the hazel-screen on to the grass, Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas! Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool. (Work, work, you fool—!) Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads, And the red firelight steadily wheeling Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep. And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing For the man to heed lest the girl shall weep. (Tears and dreams for them; for me Bitter science—the exams. are near. I wish I bore it more patiently. I wish you did not wait, my dear, For me to come: since work I must: Though it's all the same when we are dead.— I wish I was only a bust, All head.)

      Discord in Childhood

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      Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,

       And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree

       Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's

       Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

       Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash

       Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound

       Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned

       The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise of the ash.

      Virgin Youth

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      Now and again

       All my body springs alive,

       And the life that is polarised in my eyes,

       That quivers between my eyes and mouth,

       Flies like a wild thing across my body,

       Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous,

       Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,

       Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts

       Into urgent, passionate waves,

       And my soft, slumbering belly

       Quivering awake with one impulse of desire,

       Gathers itself fiercely together;

       And my docile, fluent arms

       Knotting themselves with wild strength

       To clasp what they have never clasped.

       Then I tremble, and go trembling

       Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body,

       Till it has spent itself,

       And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,

       Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,

       Back from my beautiful, lonely body

       Tired and unsatisfied.

      Monologue of a Mother

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      This is the last of all, this is the last!

       I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,

       I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,

       Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past

       Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire

       Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.

       Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a lover,

       Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting

       The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;

       White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover

       Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting

       The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

       Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,

       Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing

       Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats

       From place to place perpetually, seeking release

       From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing

       His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

       I must look away from him, for my faded eyes

       Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,

       Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,

       Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies

       In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,

       As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.

       This is the last, it will not be any more.

       All my life I have borne the burden of myself,

       All the long years of sitting in my husband's house,

       Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:

       "Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O Self,

       You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse."

       Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.

       It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!

       Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago

       The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected

       Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,

       I must sit awhile and wait, and never know

       The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

       Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me;

      

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