As the heart beneath did wield
Systole, diastole.
And he showed it me
So, when he made his love to me;
And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out,
And his eyes were deep like the sea
With shadow, and he looked at me,
Till I sank in him like the sea,
Awfully.
Oh, he was multiform —
Which then was he among the manifold?
The gay, the sorrowful, the seer?
I have loved a rich race of men in one —
— But not this, this never-warm
Metal-cold — !
Ah, masquerader!
With your steel face white-enamelled
Were you he, after all, and I never
Saw you or felt you in kissing?
— Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled
With fear, evader!
You will not stir,
Nor hear me, not a sound.
— Then it was you —
And all this time you were
Like this when I lived with you.
It is not true,
I am frightened, I am frightened of you
And of everything.
O God! — God too
Has deceived me in everything,
In everything.
THE MOWERS
There’s four men mowing down by the river;
I can hear the sound of the scythe strokes, four
Sharp breaths swishing: — yea, but I
Am sorry for what’s i’ store.
The first man out o’ the four that’s mowin’
Is mine: I mun claim him once for all:
— But I’m sorry for him, on his young feet, knowin’
None o’ the trouble he’s led to stall.
As he sees me bringin’ the dinner, he lifts
His head as proud as a deer that looks
Shoulder-deep out o’ th’ corn: and wipes
His scythe blade bright, unhooks
His scythe stone, an’ over the grass to me!
— Lad, tha ‘s gotten a chilt in me,
An’ a man an’ a father tha ‘lt ha’e to be,
My young slim lad, an’ I’m sorry for thee.
SCENT OF IRISES
A faint, sickening scent of irises
Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table
A fine proud spike of purple irises
Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable
To see the class’s lifted and bended faces
Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.
I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless
Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast
You with fire on your brow and your cheeks and your chin as you dipped
Your face in your marigold bunch, to touch and contrast
Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks
Dissolved in the golden sorcery you should not outlast.
You amid the bog-end’s yellow incantation,
You sitting in the cowslips of the meadows above,
— Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,
Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love —
You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent,
You, with your face all rich, like the sheen on a dove — !
You are always asking, do I remember, remember
The buttercup bog-end where the flowers rose up
And kindled you over deep with a coat of gold?
You ask again, do the healing days close up
The open darkness which then drew us in,
The dark that swallows all, and nought throws up.
You upon the dry, dead beech-leaves, in the fire of night
Burnt like a sacrifice; — you invisible —
Only the fire of darkness, and the scent of you!
— And yes, thank God, it still is possible
The healing days shall close the darkness up
Wherein I breathed you like a smoke or dew.
Like vapour, dew, or poison. Now, thank God,
The golden fire has gone, and your face is ash
Indistinguishable in the grey, chill day,
The night has burnt you out, at last the good
Dark fire burns on untroubled without clash
Of you upon the dead leaves saying me yea.
GREEN
The sky was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
PANSIES
CONTENTS
Our Day is Over
Hark in the Dusk!
Elephants in the Circus
Elephants Plodding
On the Drum
Two Performing Elephants
Twilight
Cups
Bowls
You
After Dark
Destiny
To Let Go or to Hold On — ?
How Beastly the Bourgeois is
Worm Either Way
Leda
Natural Complexion
The Oxford Voice
To be Superior
True Democracy
Swan
Give Us Gods
Won’t It be Strange — ?
Spiral Flame
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
When Wilt Thou Teach the People — ?
A Living
When I Went to the Film
When I Went to the Circus
The Noble Englishman
Things Men Have Made
Things Made by Iron
New Houses, New Clothes
Whatever Man Makes
We are Transmitters
Let Us be Men
All That We Have is Life
Work
Why — ?
Moon Memory
What is He?
O! Start a Revolution
There is Rain in Me
Desire Goes Down into the Sea
The Sea, the Sea
Old Song
Good Husbands Make Unhappy Wives
November by the Sea
Fight! O My Young Men
Women Want Fighters for Their Lovers
It’s Either You Fight Or You Die
Don’ts
The Risen Lord
The Secret Waters
Obscenity
Beware! O My Dear Young Men
Sex Isn’t Sin
Sex and Trust
The Gazelle Calf
The Elephant is Slow to Mate
Little Fish
The Mosquito Knows
Self-Pity
New Moon
Spray
Seaweed
My Enemy
Touch
Noli Me Tangere
Chastity
Let Us Talk, Let Us Laugh
Touch Comes
Leave Sex Alone
The Mess of Love
Climb Down, O Lordly Mind
Ego-Bound
Jealousy
Ego-Bound Women
Fidelity
Know Deeply, Know Thyself More Deeply
All I Ask
The Universe Flows
Underneath
The Primal Passions
Escape
The Root of Our Evil
The Ignoble Procession
No Joy in Life
Wild Things in Captivity
Mournful Young Man
There is No Way Out
Money-Madness
Kill Money
Men Are Not Bad
Nottingham’s New University
I am in a Novel
No! Mr Lawrence!
Red-Herring
Our Moral Age
My Naughty Book
The Little Wowser
The Young and Their Moral Guardians
When I Read Shakespeare
Salt of the Earth
Fresh Water
Peace and War
Many Mansions
Glory
Woe
Attila
What Would You Fight For?
Choice
Riches
Poverty
Noble
Wealth
Tolerance
Compari
Sick
Dead People
Cerebral Emotions
Wellsian Futures
To Women, as Far as I’m Concerned
Blank
Elderly Discontented Women
Old People
The Grudge of the Old
Beautiful Old Age
Courage
Desire is Dead
When the Ripe Fruit Falls
Elemental
Fire
I Wish I Knew a Woman
Talk
The Effort of Love
Can’t he Borne
Man Reaches a Point
Grasshopper is a Burden
Bas ta!
Tragedy
After All the Tragedies are Over
Nullus
Dies Irae
Dies Illa
Stop It
The Death of Our Era
The New Word
Sun in Me
Be Still!
At Last
Nemesis
The Optimist
The Third Thing
The Sane Universe
Fear of Society is the Root of All Evil
God
Sane and Insane
A Sane Revolution
Always This Paying
Poor Young Things
A Played-Out Game
Triumph
The Combative Spirit
Wages
Young Fathers
A Tale Told by an Idiot
Being Alive
Self-Protection
A Man
Lizard
Relativity
Space
Sun-Men
Sun-Women
Democracy
Aristocracy of the Sun
Conscience
The Middle Classes
Immorality
Censors
Man’s Image
Immoral Man
Cowards
Think -!
Peacock
Paltry-Looking People
Tarts
Latter-Day Sinners
What Matters
Fate and the Younger Generation
As for Me, I’m a Patriot
The Rose of England
England in 1929
Liberty’s Old Story
New Brooms
Police Spies
Now It’s Happened
Energetic Women
Film Passion
Female Coercion
Volcanic Venus
What Does She Want?
Wonderful Spiritual Women
Poor Bit of a Wench!
What Ails Thee?
It’s No Good!
Don’t Look at Me!
Ships in Bottles
Know Thyself, and That Thou Art Mortal
What is Man Without an Income?
Canvassing for the Election
Altercation
Climbing Up
To Clarinda
Conundrums
A Rise in the World
Up He Goes!
The Saddest Day
Prestige
Have Done with It
Henriette
Vitality
Willy Wet-Legs
Maybe
Stand Up!
Demon Justice
Be a Demon!
The Jeune Fille
Trust
The first edition
Our Day is Over
Our day is over, night comes up
shadows steal out of the earth.
Shadows, shadows
wash over our knees and splash between our thighs,
our day is done;
we wade, we wade, we stagger, darkness rushes between our stones,
we shall drown.
Our day is over
night comes up.
Hark in the Dusk!
Hark! in the dusk
voices, gurgling like water
wreathe strong weed round the knees, as the darkness
lifts us off our feet.
As the current
thrusts warm through the loins, so the little one
wildly floats, swirls,
and the flood strikes the belly, and we are gone.
Elephants in the Circus
Elephants in the circus
have aeons of weariness round their eyes.
Yet they sit up
and show vast bellies to the children.
Elephants Plodding
Plod! Plod!
And what ages of time
the worn arches of their spines support!
On the Drum
The huge old female on the drum
shuffles gingerly round
and smiles; the vastness of her elephant antiquity
is amused.
Two Performing Elephants
He stands with his forefeet on the drum
and the other, the old one, the pallid hoary female
must creep her great bulk beneath the bridge of him.
On her knees, in utmost caution
all agog, and curling up her trunk
she edges through without upsetting him.
Triumph! the ancient, pig-tailed monster!
When her trick is to climb over him
with what shadow-like slow carefulness
she skims him, sensitive
as shadows from the ages gone and perished
in touching him, and planting her round feet.
While the wispy, modem children, half-afraid
watch silent. The looming of the hoary, far-gone ages
is too much for them.
Twilight
Twilight
thick underdusk
and a hidden voice like water clucking
callously continuous.
While darkness submerges the stones
and splashes warm between the buttocks.
Cups
Cups, let them be dark
like globules of night about to plash.
I want to drink out of dark cups that drip down on their feet.
Bowls
Take away all this crystal and silver
and give me soft-skinned wood
that lives erect through long nights, physically
to put to my lips.
You
You, you don’t know me.
When have your knees ever nipped me
like fire-tongs a live coal
for a minute?
After Dark
Can you, after dark, become a darkie?
Could one, at night, run up against the standing flesh of you
with a shock, as against the blackness of a negro,
and catch flesh like the night in one’s arms.
Destiny
O — destiny, destiny,
do you exist, and can a man touch her hand?
O — destiny
if I could see your hand, and it were thumbs down,
I would be willing to give way, like the pterodactyl,
and accept obliteration.
I would not even ask to leave a fossil claw extant,
nor a thumb mark like a clue,
I would be willing to vanish completely, completely.
But if it is thumbs up, and mankind must go on being mankind,
then I am willing to fight, I will roll my sleeves up and start in.
Only, O destiny
> I wish you’d show your hand.
To Let Go or to Hold On — ?
Shall we let go,
and allow the soul to find its level
downwards, ebbing downwards, ebbing downwards to the flood?
till the head floats tilted like a bottle forward tilted
on the sea, with no message in it; and the body is submerged
heavy and swaying like a whale recovering
from wounds, below the deep black wave?
like a whale recovering its velocity and strength
under the cold black wave.
Or else, or else
shall a man brace himself up
and lift his face and set his breast
and go forth to change the world?
gather his will and his energy together
and fling himself in effort after effort
upon the world, to bring a change to pass?
Tell me first, O tell me,
will the dark flood of our day’s annihilation
swim deeper, deeper, till it leaves no peak emerging?
Shall we be lost, all of us
and gone like weed, like weed, like eggs of fishes,
like sperm of whales, like germs of the great dead past
into which the creative future shall blow strange, unknown forms?
Are we nothing, already, but the lapsing of a great dead past?
Is the best that we are but sperm, loose sperm, like the sperm of fishes
that drifts upon time and chaos, till some unknown future takes it up
and is fecund with a new Day of new creatures? different from us.
Or is our shattered Argosy, our leaking ark
at this moment scraping tardy Ararat?
Have we got to get down and clear away the debris
of a swamped civilisation, and start a new world for man
that will blossom forth the whole of human nature?
Must we hold on, hold on
and go ahead with what is human nature
and make a new job of the human world?
Or can we let it go?
O, can we let it go,
and leave it to some nature that is more than human
to use the sperm of what’s worth while in us
and thus eliminate us?
Is the time come for humans
now to begin to disappear,
leaving it to the vast revolutions of creative chaos
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 849