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Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

Page 835

by D. H. Lawrence


  In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate

  dark monads.

  This new red rock in a waste of white rises against

  the day

  With shelter now, and with blandishment, since

  the winds have had their way

  And laid the desert horrific of silence and snow on

  the world of mankind,

  School now is the rock in this weary land the winter

  burns and makes blind.

  SICKNESS

  WAVING slowly before me, pushed into the dark,

  Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the

  bark

  Of my body slowly behind.

  Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night

  Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if

  in their flight

  My hands should touch the door!

  What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door

  Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet,

  before

  I can draw back!

  What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide

  And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone

  down the tide

  Of eternal hereafter!

  Catch my hands, my darling, between your breasts.

  Take them away from their venture, before fate

  wrests

  The meaning out of them.

  EVERLASTING FLOWERS

  WHO do you think stands watching

  The snow-tops shining rosy

  In heaven, now that the darkness

  Takes all but the tallest posy?

  Who then sees the two-winged

  Boat down there, all alone

  And asleep on the snow’s last shadow,

  Like a moth on a stone?

  The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,

  Have all gone dark, gone black.

  And now in the dark my soul to you

  Turns back.

  To you, my little darling,

  To you, out of Italy.

  For what is loveliness, my love,

  Save you have it with me!

  So, there’s an oxen wagon

  Comes darkly into sight:

  A man with a lantern, swinging

  A little light.

  What does he see, my darling

  Here by the darkened lake?

  Here, in the sloping shadow

  The mountains make?

  He says not a word, but passes,

  Staring at what he sees.

  What ghost of us both do you think he saw

  Under the olive trees?

  All the things that are lovely —

  The things you never knew —

  I wanted to gather them one by one

  And bring them to you.

  But never now, my darling

  Can I gather the mountain-tips

  From the twilight like half-shut lilies

  To hold to your lips.

  And never the two-winged vessel

  That sleeps below on the lake

  Can I catch like a moth between my hands

  For you to take.

  But hush, I am not regretting:

  It is far more perfect now.

  I’ll whisper the ghostly truth to the world

  And tell them how

  I know you here in the darkness,

  How you sit in the throne of my eyes

  At peace, and look out of the windows

  In glad surprise.

  THE NORTH COUNTRY

  IN another country, black poplars shake them —

  selves over a pond,

  And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and

  wheel from the works beyond;

  The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the

  grass is a darker green,

  And people darkly invested with purple move

  palpable through the scene.

  Soundlessly down across the counties, out of the

  resonant gloom

  That wraps the north in stupor and purple travels

  the deep, slow boom

  Of the man-life north-imprisoned, shut in the hum

  of the purpled steel

  As it spins to sleep on its motion, drugged dense in

  the sleep of the wheel.

  Out of the sleep, from the gloom of motion, sound —

  lessly, somnambule

  Moans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned,

  asleep in the rule

  Of the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming

  the spell of its word

  Upon them and moving them helpless, mechanic,

  their will to its will deferred.

  Yet all the while comes the droning inaudible, out

  of the violet air,

  The moaning of sleep-bound beings in travail that

  toil and are will-less there

  In the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a

  dream near morning, strong

  With violent achings heaving to burst the sleep

  that is now not long.

  BITTERNESS OF DEATH

  I

  AH, stern, cold man,

  How can you lie so relentless hard

  While I wash you with weeping water!

  Do you set your face against the daughter

  Of life? Can you never discard

  Your curt pride’s ban?

  You masquerader!

  How can you shame to act this part

  Of unswerving indifference to me?

  You want at last, ah me!

  To break my heart

  Evader!

  You know your mouth

  Was always sooner to soften

  Even than your eyes.

  Now shut it lies

  Relentless, however often

  I kiss it in drouth.

  It has no breath

  Nor any relaxing. Where,

  Where are you, what have you done?

  What is this mouth of stone?

  How did you dare

  Take cover in death!

  II

  Once you could see,

  The white moon show like a breast revealed

  By the slipping shawl of stars.

  Could see the small stars tremble

  As the heart beneath did wield

  Systole, diastole.

  All the lovely macrocosm

  Was woman once to you,

  Bride to your groom.

  No tree in bloom

  But it leaned you a new

  White bosom.

  And always and ever

  Soft as a summering tree

  Unfolds from the sky, for your good,

  Unfolded womanhood;

  Shedding you down as a tree

  Sheds its flowers on a river.

  I saw your brows

  Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom,

  And I shed my very soul down into your

  thought;

  Like flowers I fell, to be caught

  On the comforted pool, like bloom

  That leaves the boughs.

  III

  Oh, masquerader,

  With a hard face white-enamelled,

  What are you now?

  Do you care no longer how

  My heart is trammelled,

  Evader?

  Is this you, after all,

  Metallic, obdurate

  With bowels of steel?

  Did you never feel? —

  Cold, insensate,

  Mechanical!

  Ah, no! — you multiform,

  You that I loved, you wonderful,

  You who darkened and shone,

  You were many men in one;

  But never this null

  This never-warm!

  Is this the sum of you?

  Is it all nought?

  Cold, metal-cold?

  Are you all told

  Here, iron-wrought?
>
  Is this what’s become of you?

  SEVEN SEALS

  SINCE this is the last night I keep you home,

  Come, I will consecrate you for the journey.

  Rather I had you would not go. Nay come,

  I will not again reproach you. Lie back

  And let me love you a long time ere you go.

  For you are sullen-hearted still, and lack

  The will to love me. But even so

  I will set a seal upon you from my lip,

  Will set a guard of honour at each door,

  Seal up each channel out of which might slip

  Your love for me.

  I kiss your mouth. Ah, love,

  Could I but seal its ruddy, shining spring

  Of passion, parch it up, destroy, remove

  Its softly-stirring crimson welling-up

  Of kisses! Oh, help me, God! Here at the source

  I’d lie for ever drinking and drawing in

  Your fountains, as heaven drinks from out their

  course

  The floods.

  I close your ears with kisses

  And seal your nostrils; and round your neck you’ll

  wear —

  Nay, let me work — a delicate chain of kisses.

  Like beads they go around, and not one misses

  To touch its fellow on either side.

  And there

  Full mid-between the champaign of your breast

  I place a great and burning seal of love

  Like a dark rose, a mystery of rest

  On the slow bubbling of your rhythmic heart.

  Nay, I persist, and very faith shall keep

  You integral to me. Each door, each mystic port

  Of egress from you I will seal and steep

  In perfect chrism.

  Now it is done. The mort

  Will sound in heaven before it is undone.

  But let me finish what I have begun

  And shirt you now invulnerable in the mail

  Of iron kisses, kisses linked like steel.

  Put greaves upon your thighs and knees, and frail

  Webbing of steel on your feet. So you shall feel

  Ensheathed invulnerable with me, with seven

  Great seals upon your outgoings, and woven

  Chain of my mystic will wrapped perfectly

  Upon you, wrapped in indomitable me.

  READING A LETTER

  SHE sits on the recreation ground

  Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale

  blue sky.

  The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound

  Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy.

  So sitting under the knotted canopy

  Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in

  a balloon

  Across the insensible void, till she stoops to see

  The sandy desert beneath her, the dreary platoon.

  She knows the waste all dry beneath her, in one

  place

  Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and

  stirring.

  But never the motion has a human face

  Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring.

  And so again, on the recreation ground

  She alights a stranger, wondering, unused to the

  scene;

  Suffering at sight of the children playing around,

  Hurt at the chalk-coloured tulips, and the even —

  ing-green.

  TWENTY YEARS AGO

  ROUND the house were lilacs and strawberries

  And foal-foots spangling the paths,

  And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries

  Caught dust from the sea’s long swaths.

  Up the wolds the woods were walking,

  And nuts fell out of their hair.

  At the gate the nets hung, balking

  The star-lit rush of a hare.

  In the autumn fields, the stubble

  Tinkled the music of gleaning.

  At a mother’s knees, the trouble

  Lost all its meaning.

  Yea, what good beginnings

  To this sad end!

  Have we had our innings?

  God forfend!

  INTIME

  RETURNING, I find her just the same,

  At just the same old delicate game.

  Still she says: “Nay, loose no flame

  To lick me up and do me harm!

  Be all yourself! — for oh, the charm

  Of your heart of fire in which I look!

  Oh, better there than in any book

  Glow and enact the dramas and dreams

  I love for ever! — there it seems

  You are lovelier than life itself, till desire

  Comes licking through the bars of your lips

  And over my face the stray fire slips,

  Leaving a burn and an ugly smart

  That will have the oil of illusion. Oh, heart

  Of fire and beauty, loose no more

  Your reptile flames of lust; ah, store

  Your passion in the basket of your soul,

  Be all yourself, one bonny, burning coal

  That stays with steady joy of its own fire.

  But do not seek to take me by desire.

  Oh, do not seek to thrust on me your fire!

  For in the firing all my porcelain

  Of flesh does crackle and shiver and break in pain,

  My ivory and marble black with stain,

  My veil of sensitive mystery rent in twain,

  My altars sullied, I, bereft, remain

  A priestess execrable, taken in vain — “

  So the refrain

  Sings itself over, and so the game

  Re-starts itself wherein I am kept

  Like a glowing brazier faintly blue of flame

  So that the delicate love-adept

  Can warm her hands and invite her soul,

  Sprinkling incense and salt of words

  And kisses pale, and sipping the toll

  Of incense-smoke that rises like birds.

  Yet I’ve forgotten in playing this game,

  Things I have known that shall have no name;

  Forgetting the place from which I came

  I watch her ward away the flame,

  Yet warm herself at the fire — then blame

  Me that I flicker in the basket;

  Me that I glow not with content

  To have my substance so subtly spent;

  Me that I interrupt her game.

  I ought to be proud that she should ask it

  Of me to be her fire-opal — .

  It is well

  Since I am here for so short a spell

  Not to interrupt her? — Why should I

  Break in by making any reply!

  TWO WIVES

  I

  INTO the shadow-white chamber silts the white

  Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night

  Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts

  A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,

  Till petals heaped between the window-shafts

  In a drift die there.

  A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed

  pane

  Draws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely

  stain

  The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bed

  That rides the room like a frozen berg, its crest

  Finally ridged with the austere line of the dead

  Stretched out at rest.

  Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressed

  The peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.

  Yet soon, too soon, she had him home again

  With wounds between them, and suffering like a

  guest

  That will not go. Now suddenly going, the pain

  Leaves an empty breast.

  II

  A tall woman,
with her long white gown aflow

  As she strode her limbs amongst it, once more

  She hastened towards the room. Did she know

  As she listened in silence outside the silent door?

  Entering, she saw him in outline, raised on a pyre

  Awaiting the fire.

  Upraised on the bed, with feet erect as a bow,

  Like the prow of a boat, his head laid back like the

  stern

  Of a ship that stands in a shadowy sea of snow

  With frozen rigging, she saw him; she drooped like

  a fern

  Refolding, she slipped to the floor as a ghost-white

  peony slips

  When the thread clips.

  Soft she lay as a shed flower fallen, nor heard

  The ominous entry, nor saw the other love,

  The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus dared

  At such an hour to lay her claim, above

  A stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed

  With misery, no more proud.

  III

  The stranger’s hair was shorn like a lad’s dark poll

  And pale her ivory face: her eyes would fail

  In silence when she looked: for all the whole

  Darkness of failure was in them, without avail.

  Dark in indomitable failure, she who had lost

  Now claimed the host,

  She softly passed the sorrowful flower shed

  In blonde and white on the floor, nor even turned

  Her head aside, but straight towards the bed

  Moved with slow feet, and her eyes’ flame steadily

  burned.

  She looked at him as he lay with banded cheek,

  And she started to speak

  Softly: “I knew it would come to this,” she said,

  “I knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus.

  So I did not fight you. You went your way instead

  Of coming mine — and of the two of us

  I died the first, I, in the after-life

 

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