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

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      Nascent

      My world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes

       Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;

       An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes

       The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.

       The surface of dreams is broken,

       The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.

       Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and I am woken

       From the dreams that the distance flattered.

       Along the railway, active figures of men.

       They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they move

       Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy world.

       Here in the subtle, rounded flesh

       Beats the active ecstasy.

       In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,

       The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh

       Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded flesh.

       Oh my boys, bending over your books,

       In you is trembling and fusing

       The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a generation:

       And I watch to see the Creator, the power that patterns the dream.

       The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned, and sure,

       But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,

       Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,

       Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern, shaping and shapen?

       Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:

       Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams

       reflected on the molten metal of dreams,

       Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them

       all as a heart-beat moves the blood,

       Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working,

       Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile

       features.

       Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen Shaper,

       The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat, light, all in one,

       Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and shaping the dream in the flesh,

       As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.

       Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I am life!

       Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring concentration

       Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the fruit of a dream,

       Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the sweep of the impulse of life,

       And watching the great Thing labouring through the whole round flesh of the world;

       And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the coming dream,

       As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal,

       Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream,

       Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious, molten life!

      A Winter's Tale

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      Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,

       And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;

       Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go

       On towards the pines at the hills' white verge.

       I cannot see her, since the mist's white scarf

       Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;

       But she's waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half

       Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.

       Why does she come so promptly, when she must know

       That she's only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;

       The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow—

       Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?

      Epilogue

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      Patience, little Heart.

       One day a heavy, June-hot woman

       Will enter and shut the door to stay.

       And when your stifling heart would summon

       Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay,

       Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies

       Flaming on after sunset,

       Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of their hot twilight;

       There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet

       Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies

       With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage,

       When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage.

       Patience, little Heart.

      A Baby Running Barefoot

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      When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass

       The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,

       They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;

       And the sight of their white play among the grass

       Is like a little robin's song, winsome,

       Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower

       For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.

       I long for the baby to wander hither to me

       Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,

       So that she can stand on my knee

       With her little bare feet in my hands,

       Cool like syringa buds,

       Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.

      Discipline

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      It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane,

       The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves;

       The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains

       The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves.

       It is no good, dear, gentleness

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