Which else were aslumber along with the whole
Of the dark, swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel.
Is chafed to anger, bursts into rage like thunder;
Which else were a silent grasp that held the
heavens
Arrested, beating thick with wonder.
Leaps like a fountain of blue sparks leaping
In a jet from out of obscurity,
Which erst was darkness sleeping.
Runs into streams of bright blue drops,
Water and stones and stars, and myriads
Of twin-blue eyes, and crops
Of floury grain, and all the hosts of day,
All lovely hosts of ripples caused by fretting
The Darkness into play.
SNAP-DRAGON
SHE bade me follow to her garden, where
The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup
Between the old grey walls; I did not dare
To raise my face, I did not dare look up,
Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in
My windows of discovery, and shrill “Sin.”
So with a downcast mien and laughing voice
I followed, followed the swing of her white dress
That rocked in a lilt along: I watched the poise
Of her feet as they flew for a space, then paused to
press
The grass deep down with the royal burden of her:
And gladly I’d offered my breast to the tread of her.
“I like to see,” she said, and she crouched her down,
She sunk into my sight like a settling bird;
And her bosom couched in the confines of her gown
Like heavy birds at rest there, softly stirred
By her measured breaths: “I like to see,” said she,
“The snap-dragon put out his tongue at me.”
She laughed, she reached her hand out to the flower,
Closing its crimson throat. My own throat in her
power
Strangled, my heart swelled up so full
As if it would burst its wine-skin in my throat,
Choke me in my own crimson. I watched her pull
The gorge of the gaping flower, till the blood did
float
Over my eyes, and I was blind —
Her large brown hand stretched over
The windows of my mind;
And there in the dark I did discover
Things I was out to find:
My Grail, a brown bowl twined
With swollen veins that met in the wrist,
Under whose brown the amethyst
I longed to taste. I longed to turn
My heart’s red measure in her cup,
I longed to feel my hot blood burn
With the amethyst in her cup.
Then suddenly she looked up,
And I was blind in a tawny-gold day,
Till she took her eyes away.
So she came down from above
And emptied my heart of love.
So I held my heart aloft
To the cuckoo that hung like a dove,
And she settled soft
It seemed that I and the morning world
Were pressed cup-shape to take this reiver
Bird who was weary to have furled
Her wings in us,
As we were weary to receive her.
This bird, this rich,
Sumptuous central grain,
This mutable witch,
This one refrain,
This laugh in the fight,
This clot of night,
This core of delight.
She spoke, and I closed my eyes
To shut hallucinations out.
I echoed with surprise
Hearing my mere lips shout
The answer they did devise.
Again I saw a brown bird hover
Over the flowers at my feet;
I felt a brown bird hover
Over my heart, and sweet
Its shadow lay on my heart.
I thought I saw on the clover
A brown bee pulling apart
The closed flesh of the clover
And burrowing in its heart.
She moved her hand, and again
I felt the brown bird cover
My heart; and then
The bird came down on my heart,
As on a nest the rover
Cuckoo comes, and shoves over
The brim each careful part
Of love, takes possession, and settles her down,
With her wings and her feathers to drown
The nest in a heat of love.
She turned her flushed face to me for the glint
Of a moment. “See,” she laughed, “if you also
Can make them yawn.” I put my hand to the dint
In the flower’s throat, and the flower gaped wide
with woe.
She watched, she went of a sudden intensely still,
She watched my hand, to see what I would fulfil.
I pressed the wretched, throttled flower between
My fingers, till its head lay back, its fangs
Poised at her. Like a weapon my hand was white
and keen,
And I held the choked flower-serpent in its pangs
Of mordant anguish, till she ceased to laugh,
Until her pride’s flag, smitten, cleaved down to the
staff.
She hid her face, she murmured between her lips
The low word “Don’t.” I let the flower fall,
But held my hand afloat towards the slips
Of blossom she fingered, and my fingers all
Put forth to her: she did not move, nor I,
For my hand like a snake watched hers, that could
not fly.
Then I laughed in the dark of my heart, I did exult
Like a sudden chuckling of music. I bade her eyes
Meet mine, I opened her helpless eyes to consult
Their fear, their shame, their joy that underlies
Defeat in such a battle. In the dark of her eyes
My heart was fierce to make her laughter rise.
Till her dark deeps shook with convulsive thrills, and
the dark
Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light;
And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark
Fervour within the pool of her twilight,
Within her spacious soul, to grope in delight.
And I do not care, though the large hands of revenge
Shall get my throat at last, shall get it soon,
If the joy that they are searching to avenge
Have risen red on my night as a harvest moon,
Which even death can only put out for me;
And death, I know, is better than not-to-be.
A PASSING BELL
MOURNFULLY to and fro, to and fro the trees are
waving;
What did you say, my dear?
The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a
child
Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob —
Yes, my love, I hear.
One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon
is braving,
Why not let it ring?
The roses lean down when they hear it, the tender,
mild
Flowers of the bleeding-heart fall to the throb —
It is such a little thing!
A wet bird walks on the lawn, call to the boy to come
and look,
Yes, it is over now.
Call to him out of the silence, call him to see
The starling shaking its head as it walks in the
grass —
Ah, who knows how?
He cannot see it, I can never show it him, how it
shook —
Don’t disturb him
, darling.
— Its head as it walked: I can never call him to me,
Never, he is not, whatever shall come to pass.
No, look at the wet starling.
IN TROUBLE AND SHAME
I LOOK at the swaling sunset
And wish I could go also
Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.
I wish that I could go
Through the red doors where I could put off
My shame like shoes in the porch,
My pain like garments,
And leave my flesh discarded lying
Like luggage of some departed traveller
Gone one knows not where.
Then I would turn round,
And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber,
I would laugh with joy.
ELEGY
SINCE I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near, And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near, The white moon going among them like a white bird among snow-berries, And the sound of her gently rustling in heaven like a bird I hear.
And I am willing to come to you now, my dear,
As a pigeon lets itself off from a cathedral dome
To be lost in the haze of the sky, I would like to
come,
And be lost out of sight with you, and be gone like
foam.
For I am tired, my dear, and if I could lift my feet,
My tenacious feet from off the dome of the earth
To fall like a breath within the breathing wind
Where you are lost, what rest, my love, what rest!
GREY EVENING
WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?
Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields.
Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,
As farther off the scythe of night is swung,
And little stars come rolling from their husk.
And all the earth is gone into a dust
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,
Covered with aged lichens, pale with must,
And all the sky has withered and gone cold.
And so I sit and scan the book of grey,
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,
All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding
With wounds of sunset and the dying day.
FIRELIGHT AND NIGHTFALL
THE darkness steals the forms of all the queens,
But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red,
Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead
Hours that were once all glory and all queens.
And I remember all the sunny hours
Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,
And morning singing where the woods are scrolled
And diapered above the chaunting flowers.
Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And grey now night is here; nor will
Another torn red sunset come to pass.
THE MYSTIC BLUE
OUT of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.
Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel
Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel
Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.
And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops
Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue
crops
Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.
And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,
The rainbow arching over in the skies,
New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.
All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea
Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously,
Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap
from the sea
Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death
we see.
LOOK! WE HAVE COME THROUGH!
CONTENTS
ARGUMENT
MOONRISE
ELEGY
NONENTITY
MARTYR À LA MODE
DON JUAN
THE SEA
HYMN TO PRIAPUS
BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN
FIRST MORNING
AND OH — THAT THE MAN I AM MIGHT CEASE TO BE —
SHE LOOKS BACK
ON THE BALCONY
FROHNLEICHNAM
IN THE DARK
MUTILATION
HUMILIATION
A YOUNG WIFE
GREEN
RIVER ROSES
GLOIRE DE DIJON
ROSES ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE
I AM LIKE A ROSE
ROSE OF ALL THE WORLD
A YOUTH MOWING
QUITE FORSAKEN
FORSAKEN AND FORLORN
FIREFLIES IN THE CORN
A DOE AT EVENING
SONG OF A MAN WHO IS NOT LOVED
SINNERS
MISERY
SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN ITALY
WINTER DAWN
A BAD BEGINNING
WHY DOES SHE WEEP?
GIORNO DEI MORTI
ALL SOULS
LADY WIFE
BOTH SIDES OF THE MEDAL
LOGGERHEADS
DECEMBER NIGHT
NEW YEAR’S EVE
NEW YEAR’S NIGHT
VALENTINE’S NIGHT
BIRTH NIGHT
RABBIT SNARED IN THE NIGHT
PARADISE RE-ENTERED
SPRING MORNING
WEDLOCK
HISTORY
SONG OF A MAN WHO HAS COME THROUGH
ONE WOMAN TO ALL WOMEN
PEOPLE
STREET LAMPS
SHE SAID AS WELL TO ME
NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH
ELYSIUM
MANIFESTO
AUTUMN RAIN
FROST FLOWERS
CRAVING FOR SPRING
Lawrence, c.1922
ARGUMENT
After much struggling and loss in love and in
the world of man, the protagonist throws in
his lot with a woman who is already married.
Together they go into another country, she
perforce leaving her children behind. The
conflict of love and hate goes on between the
man and the woman, and between these two
and the world around them, till it reaches
some sort of conclusion, they transcend into
some condition of blessedness
MOONRISE
AND who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.
ELEGY
THE sun immense and rosy
Must have sunk and become
extinct
The night you closed your eyes for ever against me.
Grey days, and wan, dree dawnings
Since then, with fritter of flowers- —
Day wearies me with its ostentation and fawnings.
Still, you left me the nights,
The great dark glittery window,
The bubble hemming this empty existence with lights.
Still in the vast hollow
Like a breath in a bubble spinning
Brushing the stars, goes my soul, that skims the
bounds like a swallow!
I can look through
The film of the bubble night, to where you are.
Through the film I can almost touch you.
EASTWOOD
NONENTITY
THE stars that open and shut
Fall on my shallow breast
Like stars on a pool.
The soft wind, blowing cool
Laps little crest after crest
Of ripples across my breast.
And dark grass under my feet
Seems to dabble in me
Like grass in a brook.
Oh, and it is sweet
To be all these things, not to be
Any more myself.
For look,
I am weary of myself!
MARTYR À LA MODE
AH God, life, law, so many names you keep,
You great, you patient Effort, and you Sleep
That does inform this various dream of living,
You sleep stretched out for ever, ever giving
Us out as dreams, you august Sleep
Coursed round by rhythmic movement of all time,
The constellations, your great heart, the sun
Fierily pulsing, unable to refrain;
Since you, vast, outstretched, wordless Sleep
Permit of no beyond, ah you, whose dreams
We are, and body of sleep, let it never be said
I quailed at my appointed function, turned poltroon
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 826