For when at night, from out the full surcharge
Of a day’s experience, sleep does slowly draw
The harvest, the spent action to itself;
Leaves me unburdened to begin again;
At night, I say, when I am gone in sleep,
Does my slow heart rebel, do my dead hands
Complain of what the day has had them do?
Never let it be said I was poltroon
At this my task of living, this my dream,
This me which rises from the dark of sleep
In white flesh robed to drape another dream,
As lightning comes all white and trembling
From out the cloud of sleep, looks round about
One moment, sees, and swift its dream is over,
In one rich drip it sinks to another sleep,
And sleep thereby is one more dream enrichened.
If so the Vast, the God, the Sleep that still grows richer
Have said that I, this mote in the body of sleep
Must in my transiency pass all through pain,
Must be a dream of grief, must like a crude
Dull meteorite flash only into light
When tearing through the anguish of this life,
Still in full flight extinct, shall I then turn
Poltroon, and beg the silent, outspread God
To alter my one speck of doom, when round me burns
The whole great conflagration of all life,
Lapped like a body close upon a sleep,
Hiding and covering in the eternal Sleep
Within the immense and toilsome life-time, heaved
With ache of dreams that body forth the Sleep?
Shall I, less than the least red grain of flesh
Within my body, cry out to the dreaming soul
That slowly labours in a vast travail,
To halt the heart, divert the streaming flow
That carries moons along, and spare the stress
That crushes me to an unseen atom of fire?
When pain and all
And grief are but the same last wonder, Sleep
Rising to dream in me a small keen dream
Of sudden anguish, sudden over and spent- —
CROYDON
DON JUAN
IT is Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.
Here this round ball of earth
Where all the mountains sit
Solemn in groups,
And the bright rivers flit
Round them for girth.
Here the trees and troops
Darken the shining grass,
And many people pass
Plundered from heaven,
Many bright people pass,
Plunder from heaven.
What of the mistresses
What the beloved seven?
— They were but witnesses,
I was just driven.
Where is there peace for me?
Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.
THE SEA
You, you are all unloving, loveless, you;
Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods,
You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even,
Threshing your own passions with no woman for
the threshing-floor,
Finishing your dreams for your own sake only,
Playing your great game around the world, alone,
Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to cherish,
No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter.
Not like the earth, the spouse all full of increase
Moiled over with the rearing of her many-mouthed young;
You are single, you are fruitless, phosphorescent,
cold and callous,
Naked of worship, of love or of adornment,
Scorning the panacea even of labour,
Sworn to a high and splendid purposelessness
Of brooding and delighting in the secret of life’s goings,
Sea, only you are free, sophisticated.
You who toil not, you who spin not,
Surely but for you and your like, toiling
Were not worth while, nor spinning worth the effort!
You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift
Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out;
You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm,
So that they seem to utter themselves aloud;
You who steep from out the days their colour,
Reveal the universal tint that dyes
Their web; who shadow the sun’s great gestures
and expressions
So that he seems a stranger in his passing;
Who voice the dumb night fittingly;
Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to
death with your shadowing.
BOURNEMOUTH
HYMN TO PRIAPUS
MY love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.
I dance at the Christmas party
Under the mistletoe
Along with a ripe, slack country lass
Jostling to and fro.
The big, soft country lass,
Like a loose sheaf of wheat
Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor
At my feet.
The warm, soft country lass,
Sweet as an armful of wheat
At threshing-time broken, was broken
For me, and ah, it was sweet!
Now I am going home
Fulfilled and alone,
I see the great Orion standing
Looking down.
He’s the star of my first beloved
Love-making.
The witness of all that bitter-sweet
Heart-aching.
Now he sees this as well,
This last commission.
Nor do I get any look
Of admonition.
He can add the reckoning up
I suppose, between now and then,
Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult
Ways of men.
He has done as I have done
No doubt:
Remembered and forgotten
Turn and about.
My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.
She fares in the stark immortal
Fields of death;
I in these goodly, frozen
Fields beneath.
Something in me remembers
And will not forget.
The stream of my life in the darkness
Deathward set!
And something in me has forgotten,
Has ceased to care.
Desire comes up, and contentment
Is debonair.
I, who am worn and careful,
How much do I care?
How is it I grin then, and chuckle
Over despair?
Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient
Grief makes us free
To be faithless and faithful together
As we have to be.
BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN
FIRST PART
UPON her plodding palfrey
With a heavy child at her breast
And Joseph holding the bridle
They mount to the last hill-crest.
Dissatisfied and weary
She sees the blade of the sea
Dividing earth and heaven
In a glitter of ecstasy.
Sudden a dark-faced stranger
With his back to the sun, holds out
His arms; so she lights from her palfrey
And turns her round about.
She has gi
ven the child to Joseph,
Gone down to the flashing shore;
And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand,
Stands watching evermore.
SECOND PART
THE sea in the stones is singing,
A woman binds her hair
With yellow, frail sea-poppies,
That shine as her fingers stir.
While a naked man comes swiftly
Like a spurt of white foam rent
From the crest of a falling breaker,
Over the poppies sent.
He puts his surf-wet fingers
Over her startled eyes,
And asks if she sees the land, the land,
The land of her glad surmise.
THIRD PART
AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle
Riding at Joseph’s side,
She says, “I went to Cythera,
And woe betide!”
Her heart is a swinging cradle
That holds the perfect child,
But the shade on her forehead ill becomes
A mother mild.
So on with the slow, mean journey
In the pride of humility;
Till they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land
Over a sullen sea.
While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent
She goes far down to the shore
To where a man in a heaving boat
Waits with a lifted oar.
FOURTH PART
THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave
And looked far down the dark
Where an archway torn and glittering
Shone like a huge sea-spark.
He said: “Do you see the spirits
Crowding the bright doorway?”
He said: “Do you hear them whispering?”
He said: “Do you catch what they say?”
FIFTH PART
THEN Joseph, grey with waiting,
His dark eyes full of pain,
Heard: “I have been to Patmos;
Give me the child again.”
Now on with the hopeless journey
Looking bleak ahead she rode,
And the man and the child of no more account
Than the earth the palfrey trode.
Till a beggar spoke to Joseph,
But looked into her eyes;
So she turned, and said to her husband:
“I give, whoever denies.”
SIXTH PART
SHE gave on the open heather
Beneath bare judgment stars,
And she dreamed of her children and Joseph,
And the isles, and her men, and her scars.
And she woke to distil the berries
The beggar had gathered at night,
Whence he drew the curious liquors
He held in delight.
He gave her no crown of flowers,
No child and no palfrey slow,
Only led her through harsh, hard places
Where strange winds blow.
She follows his restless wanderings
Till night when, by the fire’s red stain,
Her face is bent in the bitter steam
That comes from the flowers of pain.
Then merciless and ruthless
He takes the flame-wild drops
To the town, and tries to sell them
With the market-crops.
So she follows the cruel journey
That ends not anywhere,
And dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot,
She is brewing hope from despair.
TRIER
FIRST MORNING
THE night was a failure
but why not — ?
In the darkness
with the pale dawn seething at the window
through the black frame
I could not be free,
not free myself from the past, those others- —
and our love was a confusion,
there was a horror,
you recoiled away from me.
Now, in the morning
As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine,
And look at the mountain-walls,
Walls of blue shadow,
And see so near at our feet in the meadow
Myriads of dandelion pappus
Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass
Held still beneath the sunshine- —
It is enough, you are near- —
The mountains are balanced,
The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the grass;
You and I together
We hold them proud and blithe
On our love.
They stand upright on our love,
Everything starts from us,
We are the source.
BEUERBERG
AND OH — THAT THE MAN I AM MIGHT CEASE TO BE- —
No, now I wish the sunshine would stop,
and the white shining houses, and the gay red
flowers on the balconies
and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out
between two valves of darkness;
the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with
muffled sound
obliterating everything.
I wish that whatever props up the walls of light
would fall, and darkness would come hurling
heavily down,
and it would be thick black dark for ever.
Not sleep, which is grey with dreams,
nor death, which quivers with birth,
but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.
What is sleep?
It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill,
but it does not alter me, nor help me.
And death would ache still, I am sure;
it would be lambent, uneasy.
I wish it would be completely dark everywhere,
inside me, and out, heavily dark utterly.
WOLFRATSHAUSEN
SHE LOOKS BACK
THE pale bubbles
The lovely pale-gold bubbles of the globe-flowers
In a great swarm clotted and single
Went rolling in the dusk towards the river
To where the sunset hung its wan gold cloths;
And you stood alone, watching them go,
And that mother-love like a demon drew you
from me
Towards England.
Along the road, after nightfall,
Along the glamorous birch-tree avenue
Across the river levels
We went in silence, and you staring to England.
So then there shone within the jungle darkness
Of the long, lush under-grass, a glow-worm’s sudden
Green lantern of pure light, a little, intense, fusing triumph,
White and haloed with fire-mist, down in the
tangled darkness.
Then you put your hand in mine again, kissed me,
and we struggled to be together.
And the little electric flashes went with us, in the grass,
Tiny lighthouses, little souls of lanterns, courage
burst into an explosion of green light
Everywhere down in the grass, where darkness was
ravelled in darkness.
Still, the kiss was a touch of bitterness on my mouth
Like salt, burning in.
And my hand withered in your hand.
For you were straining with a wild heart, back,
back again,
Back to those children you had left behind, to all
the æons of the past.
And I was here in the under-dusk of the Isar.
At home, we leaned in the bedroom window
Of the old Bavarian Gasthaus,
And the frogs in the pool beyond thrilled with
exuberance,
Like a boiling pot the pond crackled with happiness,
&nb
sp; Like a rattle a child spins round for joy, the night rattled
With the extravagance of the frogs,
And you leaned your cheek on mine,
And I suffered it, wanting to sympathise.
At last, as you stood, your white gown falling from
your breasts,
You looked into my eyes, and said: “But this is
joy!”
I acquiesced again.
But the shadow of lying was in your eyes,
The mother in you, fierce as a murderess, glaring
to England,
Yearning towards England, towards your young children,
Insisting upon your motherhood, devastating.
Still, the joy was there also, you spoke truly,
The joy was not to be driven off so easily;
Stronger than fear or destructive mother-love, it
stood flickering;
The frogs helped also, whirring away.
Yet how I have learned to know that look in your eyes
Of horrid sorrow!
How I know that glitter of salt, dry, sterile,
sharp, corrosive salt!
Not tears, but white sharp brine
Making hideous your eyes.
I have seen it, felt it in my mouth, my throat, my
chest, my belly,
Burning of powerful salt, burning, eating through
my defenceless nakedness.
I have been thrust into white, sharp crystals,
Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated.
Ah, Lot’s Wife, Lot’s Wife!
The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column
of salt, like a waterspout
That has enveloped me!
Snow of salt, white, burning, eating salt
In which I have writhed.
Lot’s Wife! — Not Wife, but Mother.
I have learned to curse your motherhood,
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 827