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

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Is smooth and fair,

       Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed,

       She sleeps a rare

       Still winsome sleep, so still, and so composed.

       Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her

       dreams

       Of perfect things.

       She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,

       And her dead mouth sings

       By its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.

      The Virgin Mother

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      My little love, my darling,

       You were a doorway to me;

       You let me out of the confines

       Into this strange countrie,

       Where people are crowded like thistles,

       Yet are shapely and comely to see.

       My little love, my dearest

       Twice have you issued me,

       Once from your womb, sweet mother,

       Once from myself, to be

       Free of all hearts, my darling,

       Of each heart's home-life free.

       And so, my love, my mother,

       I shall always be true to you;

       Twice I am born, my dearest,

       To life, and to death, in you;

       And this is the life hereafter

       Wherein I am true.

       I kiss you good-bye, my darling,

       Our ways are different now;

       You are a seed in the night-time,

       I am a man, to plough

       The difficult glebe of the future

       For God to endow.

       I kiss you good-bye, my dearest,

       It is finished between us here.

       Oh, if I were calm as you are,

       Sweet and still on your bier!

       God, if I had not to leave you

       Alone, my dear!

       Let the last word be uttered,

       Oh grant the farewell is said!

       Spare me the strength to leave you

       Now you are dead.

       I must go, but my soul lies helpless

       Beside your bed.

      At the Window

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      The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters

       Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;

       While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.

       Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede,

       Winding about their dimness the mist's grey cerements, after

       The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed.

       The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass

       To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes

       That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

      Drunk

       Table of Contents

      Too far away, oh love, I know,

       To save me from this haunted road,

       Whose lofty roses break and blow

       On a night-sky bent with a load

       Of lights: each solitary rose,

       Each arc-lamp golden does expose

       Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows

       Night blenched with a thousand snows.

       Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,

       White lilac; shows discoloured night

       Dripping with all the golden lees

       Laburnum gives back to light

       And shows the red of hawthorn set

       On high to the purple heaven of night,

       Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,

       Blood shed in the noiseless fight.

       Of life for love and love for life,

       Of hunger for a little food,

       Of kissing, lost for want of a wife

       Long ago, long ago wooed.

       . . . . . .

       Too far away you are, my love,

       To steady my brain in this phantom show

       That passes the nightly road above

       And returns again below.

       The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees

       Has poised on each of its ledges

       An erect small girl looking down at me;

       White-night-gowned little chits I see,

       And they peep at me over the edges

       Of the leaves as though they would leap, should

       I call

       Them down to my arms;

       "But, child, you're too small for me, too small

       Your little charms."

       White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,

       Some other will thresh you out!

       And I see leaning from the shades

       A lilac like a lady there, who braids

       Her white mantilla about

       Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight

       Of a man's face,

       Gracefully sighing through the white

       Flowery mantilla of lace.

       And another lilac in purple veiled

       Discreetly, all recklessly calls

       In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed

       Her forth from the night: my strength has failed

       In her voice, my weak heart falls:

       Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering

       Her draperies down,

       As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering

       White, stand naked of gown.

       . . . . . .

       The pageant of flowery trees above

       The street pale-passionate goes,

       And back again down the pavement, Love

       In a lesser pageant flows.

       Two and two are the folk that walk,

      

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