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

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Oh you who flash your arms like rockets to heaven,

       Who in lassitude lean as yachts on the sea-wind lie!

       You who in crowds are rhododendrons in blossom,

       Who stand alone in pride like lighted lamps;

       Who grappling down with work or hate or passion,

       Take strange lithe form of a beast that sweats and ramps:

       You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves,

       Who curl in sleep like kittens, who kiss as a swarm

       Of clustered, vibrating bees; who fall to earth

       At last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform?

      Renascence

       Table of Contents

      We have bit no forbidden apple,

       Eve and I,

       Yet the splashes of day and night

       Falling round us no longer dapple

       The same Eden with purple and white.

      This is our own still valley

       Our Eden, our home,

       But day shows it vivid with feeling

       And the pallor of night does not tally

       With dark sleep that once covered its ceiling.

      My little red heifer, to-night I looked in her eyes,

       —She will calve to-morrow:

       Last night when I went with the lantern, the sow was grabbing her litter

       With red, snarling jaws: and I heard the cries

       Of the new-born, and after that, the old owl, then the bats that flitter.

      And I woke to the sound of the wood-pigeons, and lay and listened,

       Till I could borrow

       A few quick beats of a wood-pigeon’s heart, and when I did rise

       The morning sun on the shaken iris glistened,

       And I saw that home, this valley, was wider than Paradise.

      I learned it all from my Eve

       This warm, dumb wisdom.

       She’s a finer instructress than years;

       She has taught my heart-strings to weave

       Through the web of all laughter and tears.

      And now I see the valley

       Fleshed all like me

       With feelings that change and quiver:

       And all things seem to tally

       With something in me,

       Something of which she’s the giver.

      Dog-tired

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      If she would come to me here,

       Now the sunken swaths

       Are glittering paths

       To the sun, and the swallows cut clear

       Into the low sun—if she came to me here!

      If she would come to me now,

       Before the last mown harebells are dead,

       While that vetch clump yet burns red;

       Before all the bats have dropped from the bough

       Into the cool of night—if she came to me now!

      The horses are untackled, the chattering machine

       Is still at last. If she would come,

       I would gather up the warm hay from

       The hill-brow, and lie in her lap till the green

       Sky ceased to quiver, and lost its tired sheen.

      I should like to drop

       On the hay, with my head on her knee

       And lie stone still, while she

       Breathed quiet above me—we could stop

       Till the stars came out to see.

      I should like to lie still

       As if I was dead—but feeling

       Her hand go stealing

       Over my face and my hair until

       This ache was shed.

      Michael-angelo

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      God shook thy roundness in His finger’s cup,

       He sunk His hands in firmness down thy sides,

       And drew the circle of His grasp, O Man,

       Along thy limbs delighted, thine, His bride’s.

      And so thou wert God-shapen: His finger

       Curved thy mouth for thee, and His strong shoulder

       Planted thee upright: art not proud to see

       In the curve of thine exquisite form the joy of the Moulder?

      He took a handful of light and rolled a ball,

       Compressed it till its beam grew wondrous dark,

       Then gave thee thy dark eyes, O Man, that all

       He made had doorway to thee through that spark.

      God, lonely, put down His mouth in a kiss of creation,

       He kissed thee, O Man, in a passion of love, and left

       The vivid life of His love in thy mouth and thy nostrils;

       Keep then the kiss from the adultress’ theft.

      Violets

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      Sister, tha knows while we was on the planks

       Aside o’ th’ grave, while th’ coffin wor lyin’ yet

       On th’ yaller clay, an’ th’ white flowers top of it

       Tryin’ to keep off ’n him a bit o’ th’ wet,

      An’ parson makin’ haste, an’ a’ the black

       Huddlin’ close together a cause o’ th’ rain,

       Did t’ ’appen ter notice a bit of a lass away back

       By a head-stun, sobbin’ an’ sobbin’ again?

      —How should I be lookin’ round

       An’ me standin’ on the plank

       Beside the open ground,

       Where our Ted ’ud soon be sank?

      Yi, an’ ’im that young,

       Snapped sudden out of all

       His wickedness, among

       Pals worse n’r ony name as you could call.

      Let be that; there’s some o’ th’ bad as we

       Like better nor all your good, an’ ’e was one.

       —An’ cos I liked him best, yi, bett’r nor thee,

      

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