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

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Across the space upon heaven’s high hostile eminence.

      All round me, but far away, the night’s twin consciousness roars

       With sounds that endlessly swell and sink like the storm of thought in the brain,

       Lifting and falling like slow breaths taken, pulsing like oars

       Immense that beat the blood of the night down its vein.

      The night is immense and awful, Helen, and I am insect small

       In the fur of this hill, clung on to the fur of shaggy, black heather.

       A palpitant speck in the fur of the night, and afraid of all,

       Seeing the world and the sky like creatures hostile together.

      And I in the fur of the world, and you a pale fleck from the sky,

       How we hate each other to-night, hate, you and I,

       As the world of activity hates the dream that goes on on high,

       As a man hates the dreaming woman he loves, but who will not reply.

      Dream-confused

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      Is that the moon

       At the window so big and red?

       No one in the room,

       No one near the bed——?

      Listen, her shoon

       Palpitating down the stair?

       —Or a beat of wings at the window there?

      A moment ago

       She kissed me warm on the mouth,

       The very moon in the south

       Is warm with a bloody glow,

       The moon from far abysses

       Signalling those two kisses.

      And now the moon

       Goes slowly out of the west,

       And slowly back in my breast

       My kisses are sinking, soon

       To leave me at rest.

      Corot

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      The trees rise tall and taller, lifted

       On a subtle rush of cool grey flame

       That issuing out of the dawn has sifted

       The spirit from each leaf’s frame.

      For the trailing, leisurely rapture of life

       Drifts dimly forward, easily hidden

       By bright leaves uttered aloud, and strife

       Of shapes in the grey mist chidden.

      The grey, phosphorescent, pellucid advance

       Of the luminous purpose of God, shines out

       Where the lofty trees athwart stream chance

       To shake flakes of its shadow about.

      The subtle, steady rush of the whole

       Grey foam-mist of advancing God,

       As He silently sweeps to His somewhere, his goal,

       Is heard in the grass of the sod.

      Is heard in the windless whisper of leaves

       In the silent labours of men in the fields,

       In the downward dropping of flimsy sheaves

       Of cloud the rain skies yield.

      In the tapping haste of a fallen leaf,

       In the flapping of red-roof smoke, and the small

       Foot-stepping tap of men beneath

       These trees so huge and tall.

      For what can all sharp-rimmed substance but catch

       In a backward ripple, God’s purpose, reveal

       For a moment His mighty direction, snatch

       A spark beneath His wheel.

      Since God sweeps onward dim and vast,

       Creating the channelled vein of Man

       And Leaf for His passage, His shadow is cast

       On all for us to scan.

      Ah listen, for Silence is not lonely:

       Imitate the magnificent trees

       That speak no word of their rapture, but only

       Breathe largely the luminous breeze.

      Morning Work

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      A gang of labourers on the piled wet timber

       That shines blood-red beside the railway siding

       Seem to be making out of the blue of the morning

       Something faery and fine, the shuttles sliding,

      The red-gold spools of their hands and faces shuttling

       Hither and thither across the morn’s crystalline frame

       Of blue: trolls at the cave of ringing cerulean mining,

       And laughing with work, living their work like a game.

      Transformations

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      I

       The Town

      Oh you stiff shapes, swift transformation seethes

       About you: only last night you were

       A Sodom smouldering in the dense, soiled air;

       To-day a thicket of sunshine with blue smoke-wreaths.

      To-morrow swimming in evening’s vague, dim vapour

       Like a weeded city in shadow under the sea,

       Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be:

       Then a group of toadstools waiting the moon’s white taper.

      And when I awake in the morning, after rain,

       To find the new houses a cluster of lilies glittering

       In scarlet, alive with the birds’ bright twittering,

       I’ll say your bond of ugliness is vain.

      II

       The Earth

      Oh Earth, you spinning clod of earth,

       And then you lamp, you lemon-coloured beauty;

       Oh Earth, you rotten apple rolling downward,

       Then brilliant Earth, from the burr of night in beauty

       As a jewel-brown horse-chestnut newly issued:—

       You are all these, and strange, it is my duty

       To take you all, sordid or radiant tissued.

      III

       Men

      Oh labourers, oh shuttles across the blue

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