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

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starved from a life of devouring always myself now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand stretching out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown. My God, but I can only say I touch, I feel the unknown! I am the first comer! Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth- ing, nothing! I am the first comer! I am the discoverer! I have found the other world! The unknown, the unknown! I am thrown upon the shore. I am covering myself with the sand. I am filling my mouth with the earth. I am burrowing my body into the soil. The unknown, the new world! VII IT was the flank of my wife I touched with my hand, I clutched with my hand rising, new-awakened from the tomb! It was the flank of my wife whom I married years ago at whose side I have lain for over a thousand nights and all that previous while, she was I, she was I; I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was touched. Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivion stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a drowned man's hand on a rock, I touched her flank and knew I was carried by the current in death over to the new world, and was climbing out on the shore, risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I, the old life, wakened not to the old knowledge but to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, a new world of time. Ah no, I cannot tell you what it is, the new world I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of its discovery. I shall be mad with delight before I have done, and whosoever comes after will find me in the new world a madman in rapture. VIII GREEN streams that flow from the innermost continent of the new world, what are they? Green and illumined and travelling for ever dissolved with the mystery of the innermost heart of the continent mystery beyond knowledge or endurance, so sump- tuous out of the well-heads of the new world.— The other, she too has strange green eyes! White sands and fruits unknown and perfumes that never can blow across the dark seas to our usual world! And land that beats with a pulse! And valleys that draw close in love! And strange ways where I fall into oblivion of uttermost living!— Also she who is the other has strange-mounded breasts and strange sheer slopes, and white levels. Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takes possession of me! The unknown, strong current of life supreme drowns me and sweeps me away and holds me down to the sources of mystery, in the depths, extinguishes there my risen resurrected life and kindles it further at the core of utter mystery. GREATHAM

      Elysium

       Table of Contents

      I HAVE found a place of loneliness

       Lonelier than Lyonesse

       Lovelier than Paradise;

       Full of sweet stillness

       That no noise can transgress

       Never a lamp distress.

       The full moon sank in state.

       I saw her stand and wait

       For her watchers to shut the gate.

       Then I found myself in a wonderland

       All of shadow and of bland

       Silence hard to understand.

       I waited therefore; then I knew

       The presence of the flowers that grew

       Noiseless, their wonder noiseless blew.

       And flashing kingfishers that flew

       In sightless beauty, and the few

       Shadows the passing wild-beast threw.

       And Eve approaching over the ground

       Unheard and subtle, never a sound

       To let me know that I was found.

       Invisible the hands of Eve

       Upon me travelling to reeve

       Me from the matrix, to relieve

       Me from the rest! Ah terribly

       Between the body of life and me

       Her hands slid in and set me free.

       Ah, with a fearful, strange detection

       She found the source of my subjection

       To the All, and severed the connection.

       Delivered helpless and amazed

       From the womb of the All, I am waiting, dazed

       For memory to be erased.

       Then I shall know the Elysium

       That lies outside the monstrous womb

       Of time from out of which I come.

      Manifesto

       Table of Contents

      I A WOMAN has given me strength and affluence. Admitted! All the rocking wheat of Canada, ripening now, has not so much of strength as the body of one woman sweet in ear, nor so much to give though it feed nations. Hunger is the very Satan. The fear of hunger is Moloch, Belial, the horrible God. It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear of hunger. Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirsty throat. I have never yet been smitten through the belly, with the lack of bread, no, nor even milk and honey. The fear of the want of these things seems to be quite left out of me. For so much, I thank the good generations of man- kind. II AND the sweet, constant, balanced heat of the suave sensitive body, the hunger for this has never seized me and terrified me. Here again, man has been good in his legacy to us, in these two primary instances. III THEN the dumb, aching, bitter, helpless need, the pining to be initiated, to have access to the knowledge that the great dead have opened up for us, to know, to satisfy the great and dominant hunger of the mind; man's sweetest harvest of the centuries, sweet, printed books, bright, glancing, exquisite corn of many a stubborn glebe in the upturned darkness; I thank mankind with passionate heart that I just escaped the hunger for these, that they were given when I needed them, because I am the son of man. I have eaten, and drunk, and warmed and clothed my body, I have been taught the language of understanding, I have chosen among the bright and marvellous books, like any prince, such stores of the world's supply were open to me, in the wisdom and goodness of man. So far, so good. Wise, good provision that makes the heart swell with love! IV BUT then came another hunger very deep, and ravening; the very body's body crying out with a hunger more frightening, more profound than stomach or throat or even the mind; redder than death, more clamorous. The hunger for the woman. Alas, it is so deep a Moloch, ruthless and strong, 'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord, not to be spoken aloud. Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us, which we must learn to satisfy with pure, real satisfaction; or perish, there is no alternative. I thought it was woman, indiscriminate woman, mere female adjunct of what I was. Ah, that was torment hard enough and a thing to be afraid of, a threatening, torturing, phallic Moloch. A woman fed that hunger in me at last. What many women cannot give, one woman can; so I have known it. She stood before me like riches that were mine. Even then, in the dark, I was tortured, ravening, unfree, Ashamed, and shameful, and vicious. A man is so terrified of strong hunger; and this terror is the root of all cruelty. She loved me, and stood before me, looking to me. How could I look, when I was mad? I looked sideways, furtively, being mad with voracious desire. V THIS comes right at last. When a man is rich, he loses at last the hunger fear. I lost at last the fierceness that fears it will starve. I could put my face at last between her breasts and know that they were given for ever that I should never starve never perish; I had eaten of the bread that satisfies and my body's body was appeased, there was peace and richness, fulfilment. Let them praise desire who will, but only fulfilment will do, real fulfilment, nothing short. It is our ratification our heaven, as a matter of fact. Immortality, the heaven, is only a projection of this strange but actual fulfilment, here in the flesh. So, another hunger was supplied,

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