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

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Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wet

       Cheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: "Is it you?"

       Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, held fast

       Against the wind; and if, where the lamplight blew

       Its rainy swill about us, she answered me

       With a laugh and a merry wildness that it was she

       Who was seeking me, and had found me at last to free

       Me now from the stunting bonds of my chastity,

       How glad I should be!

       Moving along in the mysterious ebb of the night

       Pass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in a dark pool;

       Why don't they open with vision and speak to me, what have they in sight?

       Why do I wander aimless among them, desirous fool?

       I can always linger over the huddled books on the stalls,

       Always gladden my amorous fingers with the touch of their leaves,

       Always kneel in courtship to the shelves in the doorways, where falls

       The shadow, always offer myself to one mistress, who always receives.

       But oh, it is not enough, it is all no good.

       There is something I want to feel in my running blood,

       Something I want to touch; I must hold my face to the rain,

       I must hold my face to the wind, and let it explain

       Me its life as it hurries in secret.

       I will trail my hands again through the drenched, cold leaves

       Till my hands are full of the chillness and touch of leaves,

       Till at length they induce me to sleep, and to forget.

      A Baby Asleep After Pain

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      As a drenched, drowned bee

       Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,

       So clings to me

       My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears

       And laid against her cheek;

       Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm

       Swinging heavily to my movement as I walk.

       My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,

       Like a burden she hangs on me.

       She has always seemed so light,

       But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain

       Even her floating hair sinks heavily,

       Reaching downwards;

       As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee

       Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

      Anxiety

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      The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,

       The crisping steam of a train

       Melts in the air, while two black birds

       Sweep past the window again.

       Along the vacant road, a red

       Bicycle approaches; I wait

       In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy

       To leap down at our gate.

       He has passed us by; but is it

       Relief that starts in my breast?

       Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still

       She has no rest.

      The Punisher

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      I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells,

       Scooped them up with small, iron words,

       Dripping over the runnels.

       The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still

       I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys

       Glitter and spill.

       Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came

       Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,

       Whirling a flame.

       . . . . . . .

       The tears are dry, and the cheeks' young fruits are fresh

       With laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, since pain

       Beat through the flesh.

       The Angel of Judgment has departed again to the Nearness.

       Desolate I am as a church whose lights are put out.

       And night enters in drearness.

       The fire rose up in the bush and blazed apace,

       The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish;

       Then God left the place.

       Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go, my head

       Is heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously,

       My strength is shed.

      The End

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      If I could have put you in my heart,

       If but I could have wrapped you in myself,

       How glad I should have been!

       And now the chart

       Of memory unrolls again to me

       The course of our journey here, before we had to part.

       And oh, that you had never, never been

       Some of your selves, my love, that some

       Of your several faces I had never seen!

       And still they come before me, and they go,

       And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.

       And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,

       And have not any longer any hope

       To heal the suffering, or make requite

       For all your life of asking and despair,

       I own that some of me is dead to-night.

      The Bride

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      My love looks like a girl to-night,

       But she is old.

       The plaits that lie along her pillow

       Are not gold,

       But threaded with filigree,

       And uncanny cold.

       She looks like a young maiden, since her brow

      

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