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

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disused room: a grey pale light like must

       That settled upon my face and hands till it seemed

       To flourish there, as pale mould blooms on a crust.

      Then I rose in fear, needing you fearfully,

       For I thought you were warm as a sudden jet of blood.

       I thought I could plunge in your spurting hotness, and be

       Clean of the cold and the must.—With my hand on the latch

       I heard you in your sleep speak strangely to me.

      And I dared not enter, feeling suddenly dismayed.

       So I went and washed my deadened flesh in the sea

       And came back tingling clean, but worn and frayed

       With cold, like the shell of the moon: and strange it seems

       That my love has dawned in rose again, like the love of a maid.

      End of Another Home-holiday

       Table of Contents

      I

      When shall I see the half moon sink again

       Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?

       When will the scent of the dim, white phlox

       Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?

      Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,

       (Will it never finish the twelve?)

       Falls again and again on my heart with a heavy reproach?

      The moon-mist is over the village, out of the mist speaks the bell,

       And all the little roofs of the village bow low, pitiful, beseeching, resigned:

       Oh, little home, what is it I have not done well?

      Ah home, suddenly I love you,

       As I hear the sharp clean trot of a pony down the road,

       Succeeding sharp little sounds dropping into the silence,

       Clear upon the long-drawn hoarseness of a train across the valley.

      The light has gone out from under my mother’s door.

       That she should love me so,

       She, so lonely, greying now,

       And I leaving her,

       Bent on my pursuits!

      Love is the great Asker,

       The sun and the rain do not ask the secret

       Of the time when the grain struggles down in the dark.

       The moon walks her lonely way without anguish,

       Because no loved one grieves over her departure.

      II

      Forever, ever by my shoulder pitiful Love will linger,

       Crouching as little houses crouch under the mist when I turn.

       Forever, out of the mist the church lifts up her reproachful finger,

       Pointing my eyes in wretched defiance where love hides her face to mourn.

      Oh but the rain creeps down to wet the grain

       That struggles alone in the dark,

       And asking nothing, cheerfully steals back again!

       The moon sets forth o’ nights

       To walk the lonely, dusky heights

       Serenely, with steps unswerving;

       Pursued by no sigh of bereavement,

       No tears of love unnerving

       Her constant tread:

       While ever at my side,

       Frail and sad, with grey bowed head,

       The beggar-woman, the yearning-eyed

       Inexorable love goes lagging.

      The wild young heifer, glancing distraught,

       With a strange new knocking of life at her side

       Runs seeking a loneliness.

       The little grain draws down the earth to hide.

       Nay, even the slumberous egg, as it labours under the shell,

       Patiently to divide, and self-divide,

       Asks to be hidden, and wishes nothing to tell.

      But when I draw the scanty cloak of silence over my eyes,

       Piteous Love comes peering under the hood.

       Touches the clasp with trembling fingers, and tries

       To put her ear to the painful sob of my blood,

       While her tears soak through to my breast,

       Where they burn and cauterise.

      III

      The moon lies back and reddens.

       In the valley, a corncrake calls

       Monotonously,

       With a piteous, unalterable plaint, that deadens

       My confident activity:

       With a hoarse, insistent request that falls

       Unweariedly, unweariedly,

       Asking something more of me,

       Yet more of me!

      Reminder

       Table of Contents

      Do you remember

       How night after night swept level and low

       Overhead, at home, and had not one star,

       Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go

       Forth to her field of November.

      And you remember,

       How towards the north a red blot on the sky

       Burns like a blotch of anxiety

       Over the forges, and small flames ply

       Like ghosts the shadow of the ember.

      Those were the days

       When it was awful autumn to me,

       When only there glowed on the dark of the sky

       The red reflection of her agony,

       My beloved smelting down in the blaze

      Of death—my dearest

       Love who had borne, and was now leaving me.

       And I at the foot of her cross did suffer

       My own gethsemane.

      So I came to you,

       And twice, after great kisses, I saw

       The rim of the moon divinely rise

       And strive to detach herself from the raw

       Blackened edge of the skies.

      Strive to escape;

       With her whiteness revealing my sunken world

       Tall and loftily shadowed. But the moon

       Never magnolia-like unfurled

       Her white, her lamp-like shape.

      For you told me no,

       And bade me not to ask for

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