Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

by D. H. Lawrence

  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