I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,
It is large, so large, I could not see it before,
Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,
Troubles, anxieties and pains.
You are the call and I am the answer,
You are the wish, and I the fulfilment,
You are the night, and I the day.
What else - it is perfect enough.
It is perfectly complete,
You and I,
What more — ?
Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.
LIGHTNING
I felt the lurch and halt of her heart
Next my breast, where my own heart was beating;
And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound,
And strange in my blood-swept ears was the sound
Of the words I kept repeating,
Repeating with tightened arms, and the hot blood’s blindfold art.
Her breath flew warm against my neck,
Warm as a flame in the close night air;
And the sense of her clinging flesh was sweet
Where her arms and my neck’s blood-surge could meet.
Holding her thus, did I care
That the black night hid her from me, blotted out every speck?
I leaned me forward to find her lips,
And claim her utterly in a kiss,
When the lightning flew across her face,
And I saw her for the flaring space
Of a second, afraid of the clips
Of my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear of my kiss.
A moment, like a wavering spark,
Her face lay there before my breast,
Pale love lost in a snow of fear,
And guarded by a glittering tear,
And lips apart with dumb cries;
A moment, and she was taken again in the merciful dark.
I heard the thunder, and felt the rain,
And my arms fell loose, and I was dumb.
Almost I hated her, she was so good.
Hated myself, and the place, and my blood,
Which burned with rage, as I bade her come
Home, away home, ere the lightning floated forth again.
SONG-DAY IN AUTUMN
When the autumn roses
Are heavy with dew,
Before the mist discloses
The leaf’s brown hue,
You would, among the laughing hills
Of yesterday
Walk innocent in the daffodils,
Coiffing up your auburn hair
In a puritan fillet, a chaste white snare
To catch and keep me with you there
So far away.
When from the autumn roses
Trickles the dew,
When the blue mist uncloses
And the sun looks through,
You from those startled hills
Come away,
Out of the withering daffodils;
Thoughtful, and half afraid,
Plaiting a heavy, auburn braid
And coiling it round the wise brows of a maid
Who was scared in her play.
When in the autumn roses
Creeps a bee,
And a trembling flower encloses
His ecstasy,
You from your lonely walk
Turn away,
And leaning to me like a flower on its stalk,
Wait among the beeches
For your late bee who beseeches
To creep through your loosened hair till he reaches,
Your heart of dismay.
AWARE
Slowly the moon is rising out of the ruddy haze,
Divesting herself of her golden shift, and so
Emerging white and exquisite; and I in amaze
See in the sky before me, a woman I did not know
I loved, but there she goes and her beauty hurts my heart;
I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.
A PANG OF REMINISCENCE
High and smaller goes the moon, she is small and very far from me,
Wistful and candid, watching me wistfully, and I see
Trembling blue in her pallor a tear that surely I have seen before,
A tear which I had hoped that even hell held not again in store.
A WHITE BLOSSOM
A tiny moon as white and small as a single jasmine flower
Leans all alone above my window, on night’s wintry bower,
Liquid as lime-tree blossom, soft as brilliant water or rain
She shines, the one white love of my youth, which all sin cannot stain.
RED MOON-RISE
The train in running across the weald has fallen into a steadier stroke
So even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one unbroke
Embrace of darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the loose
And littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and we can use
The open book of landscape no more, for the covers of darkness have shut upon
Its written pages, and sky and earth and all between are closed in one.
And we are smothered between the darkness, we close our eyes and say “Hush!” we try
To escape in sleep the terror of this immense deep darkness, and we lie
Wrapped up for sleep. And then, dear God, from out of the twofold darkness, red
As if from the womb the moon arises, as if the twin-walled darkness had bled
In one great spasm of birth and given us this new, red moon-rise
Which lies on the knees of the darkness bloody, and makes us hide our eyes.
The train beats frantic in haste, and struggles away
From this ruddy terror of birth that has slid down
From out of the loins of night to flame our way
With fear; but God, I am glad, so glad that I drown
My terror with joy of confirmation, for now
Lies God all red before me, and I am glad,
As the Magi were when they saw the rosy brow
Of the Infant bless their constant folly which had
Brought them thither to God: for now I know
That the Womb is a great red passion whence rises all
The shapeliness that decks us here-below:
Yea like the fire that boils within this ball
Of earth, and quickens all herself with flowers,
God burns within the stiffened clay of us;
And every flash of thought that we and ours
Send up to heaven, and every movement, does
Fly like a spark from this God-fire of passion;
And pain of birth, and joy of begetting,
And sweat of labour, and the meanest fashion
Of fretting or of gladness, but the jetting
Of a trail of the great fire against the sky
Where we can see it, a jet from the innermost fire:
And even in the watery shells that lie
Alive within the oozy under-mire,
A grain of this same fire I can descry.
And then within the screaming birds that fly
Across the lightning when the storm leaps higher;
And then the swirling, flaming folk that try
To come like fire-flames at their fierce desire,
They are as earth’s dread, spurting flames that ply
Awhile and gush forth death and their expire.
And though it be love’s wet blue eyes that cry
To hot love to relinquish its desire,
Still in their depths I see the same red spark
As rose tonight upon us from the dark.
RETURN
Now I am come again, you who have so desired
My coming, why do you look away from me?
Why does your cheek burn against me — have I inspired
Such anger as sets your mouth unwontedly?
Ah,
here I sit while you break the music beneath
Your bow; for broken it is, and hurting to hear:
Cease then from music — does anguish of absence bequeath
Me only aloofness when I would draw near?
THE APPEAL
You, Helen, who see the stars
As mistletoe berries burning in a black tree,
You surely, seeing I am a bowl of kisses,
Should put your mouth to mine and drink of me.
Helen, you let my kisses steam
Wasteful into the night’s black nostrils; drink
Me up I pray; oh you who are Night’s Bacchante,
How can you from my bowl of kisses shrink!
REPULSED
The last, silk-floating thought has gone from the dandelion stem,
And the flesh of the stalk holds up for nothing a blank diadem.
The night’s flood-winds have lifted my last desire from me,
And my hollow flesh stands up in the night abandonedly.
As I stand on this hill, with the whitening cave of the city beyond,
Helen, I am despoiled of my pride, and my soul turns fond:
Overhead the nightly heavens like an open, immense eye.
Like a cat’s distended pupil sparkles with sudden stars,
As with thoughts that flash and crackle in uncouth malignancy
They glitter at me, and I fear the fierce snapping of night’s thought-stars.
Beyond me, up the darkness, goes the gush of the lights of two towns,
As the breath which rushes upwards from the nostrils of an immense
Life crouched across the globe, ready, if need be, to pounce
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
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 best 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 ruddy glow;
The moon, from far abysses
Signalling those two kisses.
And now the moon
Goes clouded, having misunderstood.
And slowly back in my blood
My kisses are sinking, soon
To be under the flood.
We misunderstood!
COROT
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 leafs 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
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
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 frame of morning,
You feet of the rainbow balancing the sky!
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
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
If she would come to me here
Now the sunken swaths
Are glittering paths
To the sun, and the swallows cut clear
Into the setting sun! if she came to me here!
If she would come to me now,
Before the last-mown harebells are dead;
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 819