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

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Like a painted window: the best

       Suffering burnt through your flesh,

       Undrossed it and left it blest

       With a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: but now

       Who shall take you afresh?

       Now who will burn you free

       From your body's terrors and dross,

       Since the fire has failed in me?

       What man will stoop in your flesh to plough

       The shrieking cross?

       A mute, nearly beautiful thing

       Is your face, that fills me with shame

       As I see it hardening,

       Warping the perfect image of God,

       And darkening my eternal fame.

      Mystery

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      Now I am all

       One bowl of kisses,

       Such as the tall

       Slim votaresses

       Of Egypt filled

       For a God's excesses.

       I lift to you

       My bowl of kisses,

       And through the temple's

       Blue recesses

       Cry out to you

       In wild caresses.

       And to my lips'

       Bright crimson rim

       The passion slips,

       And down my slim

       White body drips

       The shining hymn.

       And still before

       The altar I

       Exult the bowl

       Brimful, and cry

       To you to stoop

       And drink, Most High.

       Oh drink me up

       That I may be

       Within your cup

       Like a mystery,

       Like wine that is still

       In ecstasy.

       Glimmering still

       In ecstasy,

       Commingled wines

       Of you and me

       In one fulfil

       The mystery.

      Patience

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      A wind comes from the north

       Blowing little flocks of birds

       Like spray across the town,

       And a train, roaring forth,

       Rushes stampeding down

       With cries and flying curds

       Of steam, out of the darkening north.

       Whither I turn and set

       Like a needle steadfastly,

       Waiting ever to get

       The news that she is free;

       But ever fixed, as yet,

       To the lode of her agony.

      Ballad of Another Ophelia

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      Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,

       Lamps in a wash of rain!

       Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stack-yard,

       Oh tears on the window pane!

       Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,

       Full of disappointment and of rain,

       Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples

       Of autumn tell the withered tale again.

       All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,

       Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,

       Cluck, my marigold bird, and again

       Cluck for your yellow darlings.

       For the grey rat found the gold thirteen

       Huddled away in the dark,

       Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,

       Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.

       Once I had a lover bright like running water,

       Once his face was laughing like the sky;

       Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter

       On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I.

       What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom?

       What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?

       'Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom;

       What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men!

       Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,

       And her shift is lying white upon the floor,

       That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm,

       Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.

       Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,

       Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!

       And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,

       Did you see the wicked sun that winked!

      Restlessness

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      AT the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,

       Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,

       Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.

       I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,

       And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might

       Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.

       I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore

       To draw his net through the surfs thin line, at the dawn before

       The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide.

       I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net, the four

       Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store

       Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.

       I will catch in my eyes' quick net

       The faces of all the women as they go past,

      

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