When I know that there must ever be deceiving,
Deceiving
Of the mournful constant heart, that while she’s
weaving
Her woes, her lover woos and sings within another
wood.
Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling,
Stalling
A progress down the intricate enthralling
By-paths where the wanton-headed flowers doff
their hood.
And like a laughter leads me onward, heaving,
Heaving
A sigh among the shadows, thus retrieving
A decent short regret for that which once was very
good.
LOVE STORM
MANY roses in the wind
Are tapping at the window-sash.
A hawk is in the sky; his wings
Slowly begin to plash.
The roses with the west wind rapping
Are torn away, and a splash
Of red goes down the billowing air.
Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky moving
Past him — only a wing-beat proving
The will that holds him there.
The daisies in the grass are bending,
The hawk has dropped, the wind is spending
All the roses, and unending
Rustle of leaves washes out the rending
Cry of a bird.
A red rose goes on the wind. — Ascending
The hawk his wind-swept way is wending
Easily down the sky. The daisies, sending
Strange white signals, seem intending
To show the place whence the scream was heard.
But, oh, my heart, what birds are piping!
A silver wind is hastily wiping
The face of the youngest rose.
And oh, my heart, cease apprehending!
The hawk is gone, a rose is tapping
The window-sash as the west-wind blows.
Knock, knock, ‘tis no more than a red rose rapping,
And fear is a plash of wings.
What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping
Down the bright-grey ruin of things!
PARLIAMENT HILL IN THE EVENING
THE houses fade in a melt of mist
Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
The Night’s slow care.
The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,
The city corrodes out of sight
As the body corrodes when death invades
That citadel of delight.
Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread
Through the shroud of the town, as slow
Night-lights hither and thither shed
Their ghastly glow.
PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT
Street-Walkers.
WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like
dust above the towns,
Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in
the midst of the downs,
Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain
along the street,
Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in ex —
pectancy to meet
The luminous mist which the poor things wist was
dawn arriving across the sky,
When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town
has driven so high.
All the birds are folded in a silent ball of sleep,
All the flowers are faded from the asphalt isle in
the sea,
Only we hard-faced creatures go round and round,
and keep
The shores of this innermost ocean alive and
illusory.
Wanton sparrows that twittered when morning
looked in at their eyes
And the Cyprian’s pavement-roses are gone, and
now it is we
Flowers of illusion who shine in our gauds, make a
Paradise
On the shores of this ceaseless ocean, gay birds of
the town-dark sea.
TARANTELLA
SAD as he sits on the white sea-stone
And the suave sea chuckles, and turns to the moon,
And the moon significant smiles at the cliffs and
the boulders.
He sits like a shade by the flood alone
While I dance a tarantella on the rocks, and the
croon
Of my mockery mocks at him over the waves’
bright shoulders.
What can I do but dance alone,
Dance to the sliding sea and the moon,
For the moon on my breast and the air on my limbs
and the foam on my feet?
For surely this earnest man has none
Of the night in his soul, and none of the tune
Of the waters within him; only the world’s old
wisdom to bleat.
I wish a wild sea-fellow would come down the
glittering shingle,
A soulless neckar, with winking seas in his eyes
And falling waves in his arms, and the lost soul’s kiss
On his lips: I long to be soulless, I tingle
To touch the sea in the last surprise
Of fiery coldness, to be gone in a lost soul’s bliss.
IN CHURCH
IN the choir the boys are singing the hymn.
The morning light on their lips
Moves in silver-moist flashes, in musical trim.
Sudden outside the high window, one crow
Hangs in the air
And lights on a withered oak-tree’s top of woe.
One bird, one blot, folded and still at the top
Of the withered tree! — in the grail
Of crystal heaven falls one full black drop.
Like a soft full drop of darkness it seems to sway
In the tender wine
Of our Sabbath, suffusing our sacred day.
PIANO
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the
tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who
smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter
outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano
our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The
glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a
child for the past.
EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR
Charity.
BY the river
In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks
down,
Dropping and starting from sleep
Alone on a seat
A woman crouches.
I must go back to her.
I want to give her
Some money. Her hand slips out of the breast of
her gown
Asleep. My fingers creep
Carefully over the sweet
Thumb-mound, into the palm’s deep pouches.
So, the gift!
God, how she starts!
And looks at me, and looks in the palm of her hand!
And again at me!
I turn and run
Down the Embankment, run for my life.
But why? — why?
Because of my heart’s
Beating like sobs, I come to myself, and stand
In the street spilled over splendidly
With wet, flat lights. What I’ve done
I know not, my soul is in strife.
The touch was on the quick. I want to forget.
PHANTASMAGORIA
RIGID sleeps the house in darkness, I alone
Like a thing unwarrantable cross the hall
And climb the stairs to find the group of doors
Standing angel-stern and tall.
I want my own room’s shelter. But what is this
Throng of startled beings suddenly thrown
In confusion against my entry? Is it only the trees’
Large shadows from the outside street lamp blown?
Phantom to phantom leaning; strange women weep
Aloud, suddenly on my mind
Startling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering wind
Breaks and sobs in the blind.
So like to women, tall strange women weeping!
Why continually do they cross the bed?
Why does my soul contract with unnatural fear?
I am listening! Is anything said?
Ever the long black figures swoop by the bed;
They seem to be beckoning, rushing away, and
beckoning.
Whither then, whither, what is it, say
What is the reckoning.
Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, why
Do you rush to assail me?
Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal?
What should it avail me?
Is there some great Iacchos of these slopes
Suburban dismal?
Have I profaned some female mystery, orgies
Black and phantasmal?
NEXT MORNING
How have I wandered here to this vaulted room
In the house of life? — the floor was ruffled with gold
Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,
Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight
unfold
For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom
Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,
And damp old web of misery’s heirloom
Deadens this day’s grey-dropping arras-fold.
And what is this that floats on the undermist
Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling
Unsightly its way to the warmth? — this thing with
a list
To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?
Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it
missed
Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing
Upon me! — my own reflection! — explicit gist
Of my presence there in the mirror that leans from
the ceiling!
Then will somebody square this shade with the
being I know
I was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bell
And happy as rain in summer? Why should it be
so?
What is there gone against me, why am I in hell?
PALIMPSEST OF TWILIGHT
DARKNESS comes out of the earth
And swallows dip into the pallor of the west;
From the hay comes the clamour of children’s
mirth;
Wanes the old palimpsest.
The night-stock oozes scent,
And a moon-blue moth goes flittering by:
All that the worldly day has meant
Wastes like a lie.
The children have forsaken their play;
A single star in a veil of light
Glimmers: litter of day
Is gone from sight.
EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR
Outcasts.
THE night rain, dripping unseen,
Comes endlessly kissing my face and my hands.
The river, slipping between
Lamps, is rayed with golden bands
Half way down its heaving sides;
Revealed where it hides.
Under the bridge
Great electric cars
Sing through, and each with a floor-light racing
along at its side.
Far off, oh, midge after midge
Drifts over the gulf that bars
The night with silence, crossing the lamp-touched
tide.
At Charing Cross, here, beneath the bridge
Sleep in a row the outcasts,
Packed in a line with their heads against the wall.
Their feet, in a broken ridge
Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts
A look as he stands on the edge of this naked stall.
Beasts that sleep will cover
Their faces in their flank; so these
Have huddled rags or limbs on the naked sleep.
Save, as the tram-cars hover
Past with the noise of a breeze
And gleam as of sunshine crossing the low black heap,
Two naked faces are seen
Bare and asleep,
Two pale clots swept and swept by the light of the
cars.
Foam-clots showing between
The long, low tidal-heap,
The mud-weed opening two pale, shadowless stars.
Over the pallor of only two faces
Passes the gallivant beam of the trams;
Shows in only two sad places
The white bare bone of our shams.
A little, bearded man, pale, peaked in sleeping,
With a face like a chickweed flower.
And a heavy woman, sleeping still keeping
Callous and dour.
Over the pallor of only two places
Tossed on the low, black, ruffled heap
Passes the light of the tram as it races
Out of the deep.
Eloquent limbs
In disarray
Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth
thighs
Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims
Of trousers fray
On the thin bare shins of a man who uneasily lies.
The balls of five red toes
As red and dirty, bare
Young birds forsaken and left in a nest of mud —
Newspaper sheets enclose
Some limbs like parcels, and tear
When the sleeper stirs or turns on the ebb of the
flood —
One heaped mound
Of a woman’s knees
As she thrusts them upward under the ruffled skirt —
And a curious dearth of sound
In the presence of these
Wastrels that sleep on the flagstones without any
hurt.
Over two shadowless, shameless faces
Stark on the heap
Travels the light as it tilts in its paces
Gone in one leap.
At the feet of the sleepers, watching,
Stand those that wait
For a place to lie down; and still as they stand,
they sleep,
Wearily catching
The flood’s slow gait
Like men who are drowned, but float erect in the
deep.
Oh, the singing mansions,
Golden-lighted tall
Trams that pass, blown ruddily down the night!
The bridge on its stanchions
Stoops like a pall
To this human blight.
On the outer pavement, slowly,
Theatre people pass,
Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are
bright
Like flowers of infernal moly
Over nocturnal grass
Wetly bobbing and drifting away on our sight.
And still by the rotten
Row of shattered feet,
Outcasts keep guard.
Forgotten,
Forgetting, till fate shall delete
One from the ward.
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The factories on the Surrey side
Are beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky.
The river’s invisible tide
Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye.
And great gold midges
Cross the chasm
At the bridges
Above intertwined plasm.
WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD
THE frost has settled down upon the trees
And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies
Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old
Romantic stories now no more to be told.
The trees down the boulevard stand naked in
thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter’s long, cross-questioning brunt.
Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths
of the twigs?
Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the
birch? —
It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on
the sprigs,
Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with
their perch.
The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself.
Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all
Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought
Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought.
SCHOOL ON THE OUTSKIRTS
How different, in the middle of snows, the great
school rises red!
A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round
with clusters of shouting lads,
Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that
cling as the souls of the dead
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 834