SALVATION
OLD ARCHANGELS
LUCIFER
THE MILL OF GOD
MULTITUDES
FALLEN LEAVES
THE DIFFERENCE
THE BREATH OF LIFE
VENGEANCE IS MINE
ASTRONOMICAL CHANGES
FATALITY
FREE WILL
IN A SPANISH TRAM-CAR
SPANISH PRIVILEGE
AT THE BANK IN SPAIN
THE SPANISH WIFE
THE PAINTER’S WIFE
MODERN PROBLEMS
DOMINANT WOMAN
MEN AND WOMEN
THE SCIENTIFIC DOCTOR
HEALING
EN MASSE
GOD AND THE HOLY GHOST
HUMILITY
PROPER PRIDE
HUMILITY MONGERS
TENDER REVERENCE
ABSOLUTE REVERENCE
BELIEF
BELLS
THE TRIUMPH OF THE MACHINE
FORTE DEI MARMI
SEA-BATHERS
TALK OF LOYALTY
TALK OF FAITH
AMO SACRUM VULGUS
BOREDOM, ENNUI, DEPRESSION
THE DEADLY VICTORIAN
WHAT ARE THE WILD WAVES SAYING?
WELCOME DEATH
DARK SATANIC MILLS
WE DIE TOGETHER
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU?
WHAT IS A MAN TO DO?
CITY-LIFE
THIRTEEN PICTURES
AUTO-DA-FE
SHOWS
ROSE AND CABBAGE
THE GULF
THE CROSS
FELLOW-MEN
THE SIGHT OF GOD
SOULS TO SAVE
WHEN MOST MEN DIE
HOLD BACK!
IMPULSE
MEN LIKE GODS
MEN AND MACHINES
MASSES AND CLASSES
GIVE US THE THEBAID
SIDE-STEP, O SONS OF MEN!
ON AND ON AND ON
OH WONDERFUL MACHINE!
BUT I SAY UNTO YOU: LOVE ONE ANOTHER
LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR
AS THYSELF!
LONELY, LONESOME, LONEY — O!
TREES IN THE GARDEN
STORM IN THE BLACK FOREST
REVOLUTION AS SUCH!
ROBOT FEELINGS
REAL DEMOCRACY
ROBOT-DEMOCRACY
WORSHIP
CLASSES
DEMOCRACY IS SERVICE
FALSE DEMOCRACY AND REAL
SERVICE
WHAT ARE THE GODS?
THE GODS! THE GODS!
NAME THE GODS!
THERE ARE NO GODS
FOOD OF THE NORTH
RETORT TO WHITMAN
RETORT TO JESUS
THE DEEPEST SENSUALITY
SENSE OF TRUTH
SATISFACTION
VIBRATION OF JUSTICE
LIES
POISON
COMMANDMENTS
EMOTIONAL LIES
LAUGHTER
DRAWING-ROOM
CABBAGE-ROSES
COLD BLOOD
SUNSET
LISTEN TO THE BAND!
THE HUMAN FACE
PORTRAITS
FURNITURE
CHILDREN SINGING IN SCHOOL
KEEP IT UP
RACE AND BATTLE
NOTHING TO SAVE
BRITISH SINCERITY
THE ENGLISH ARE SO NICE!
THE HILLS
TOURISTS
SEEKERS
SEARCH FOR LOVE
SEARCH FOR TRUTH
LIES ABOUT LOVE
TRAVEL IS OVER
OLD MEN
DEATH
BOURGEOIS AND BOLSHEVIST
PROPERTY AND NO-PROPERTY
COWARDICE AND IMPUDENCE
LORD TENNYSON AND LORD MELCHETT
CHOICE OF EVILS
HARD-BOILED CONSERVATIVES
SOLOMON’S BABY
THE PROPERTY QUESTION
THE WAY OUT
ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
THE HALF-BIJND
MINORITIES IN DANGER
IF YOU ARE A MAN
TERRA INCOGNITA
CLIMBING DOWN
ONLY THE BEST MATTERS
TO PINO
BROADCASTING TO THE G. B. P.
WE CANT BE TOO CAREFUL
GLIMPSES
ALL SORTS OF GODS
FOR A MOMENT
GOETHE AND POSE
MEN LIKE GODS
THOUGHT
BE IT SO
CONCEIT
MAN IS MORE THAN HOMO SAPIENS
SELF-CONSCIOUS PEOPLE
TWO WAYS OF LIVING AND DYING
SO LET ME LIVE
GLADNESS OF DEATH
HUMANITY NEEDS PRUNING
SELF-SACRIFICE
SHEDDING OF BLOOD
THE OLD IDEA OF SACRIFICE
SELF-SACRIFICE
I HEARD A LITTLE CHICKEN CHIRP
CROSS, COARSE, HIDEOUS
MR SQUIRE
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
GOD IS BORN
THE WHITE HORSE
FLOWERS AND MEN
PRAYER
SHIP OF DEATH
THE SHIP OF DEATH
SONG OF DEATH
GLORY OF DARKNESS
BAVARIAN GENTIANS
IMAGE-MAKING LOVE
AND now
the best of all
is to be alone, to possess one’s soul in silence.
Nakedly to be alone, unseen
is better than anything else in the world,
a relief like death.
Always
at the core of me
burns the small flame of anger, gnawing
from trespassed contacts, from red-hot finger bruises, on my
inward flesh.
A lways
in the eyes of those who loved me
I have seen at last the image of him they loved
and took for me
mistook for me.
And always
it was a simulacrum, something
like me, and like a gibe at me.
So now I want, above all things
to preserve my nakedness
from the gibe of image-making love.
PEOPLE
I LIKE people quite well
at a little distance.
I like to see them passing and passing
and going their own way,
especially if I see their aloneness alive in them.
Yet I don’t want them to come near.
If they will only leave me alone
I can still have the illusion that there is room enough in the world.
DESIRE
AH, in the past, towards rare individuals
I have felt the pull of desire:
Oh come, come nearer, come into touch!
Come physically nearer, be flesh to my flesh —
But say little, oh say little,
and afterwards, leave me alone.
Keep your aloneness, leave me my aloneness,
I used to say this, in the past, but now no more.
It has always been a failure
They have always insisted on love
and on talking about it
and on the me-and-thee and what we meant to each other.
So now I have no desire any more
Except to be left, in the last resort, alone, quite alone.
TO A CERTAIN FRIEND
You are so interested in yourself
that you bore me
thoroughly, I am unable to feel any interest in your interesting self.
THE EMOTIONAL FRIEND
HE said to me: You don’t trust me!
I said: Oh yes I do!
I know you won’t pick my pocket,
I know you’ll be very kind to me.
But it was not enough, he looked at me almost with hate.
And I failed entirely to see what he meant —
Since there was no circumstance requiring trust between i
CORRESPONDENCE IN AFTER YEARS
A MAN wrote to me: We missed it, you and I.
We were meant to mean a great deal to one another;
but we missed it.
And I could only reply:
A miss is as good as a mile mister!
THE EGOISTS
THE only question to ask to-day, about man or woman
is: Has she chipped the shell of her own ego?
Has he chipped the shell of his own ego?
They are all perambulating eggs
going: “ Squeak! Squeak! I am all things unto myself,
yet I can’t be alone, I want somebody to keep me warm.”
CHIMAERA
MOST people, to-day, are chimaera chimerical:
just fantasies of self-importance
their own self-importance
and sphinxes of self-consciousness.
ULTIMATE REALITY
A YOUNG man said to me:
I am interested in the problem of reality.
I said: Really!
Then I saw him turn to glance, surreptitiously,
in the big mirror, at his own fascinating shadow.
SPHINX
BUT why do I feel so strangely about you?
said the lovely young lady, half wistful, half menacing.
I took to my heels and ran
before she could set the claws of her self-conscious questioning in me
or tear me with the fangs of disappointment
because I could not answer the riddle of her own self- importance.
INTIMATES
Don’t you care for my love? she said bitterly.
I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all requests to headquarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct!
So I handed her the mirror.
And she would have broken it over my head,
but she caught sight of her own reflection
and that held her spell-bound for two seconds
while I fled.
TRUE LOVE AT LAST
THE handsome and self-absorbed young man
looked at the lovely and self-absorbed girl.
The lovely and self-absorbed girl
looked back at the handsome and self-absorbed young man
and thrilled.
And in that thrill he felt:
Her self-absorption is even as strong as mine.
I must see if I can’t break through it
and absorb her in me.
And in that thrill she felt:
His self-absorption is even stronger than mine!
What fun, stronger than mine!
I must see if I can’t absorb this Samson of self-absorption.
So they simply adored one another
and in the end they were both nervous wrecks, because
in self-absorption and self-interest they were equally matched.
ANDRAITX — POMEGRANATE FLOWERS
IT is June, it is June
the pomegranates are in flower,
the peasants are bending cutting the bearded wheat.
The pomegranates are in flower
beside the high road, past the deathly dust,
and even the sea is silent in the sun.
Short gasps of flame in the green of night, way off
the pomegranates are in flower,
small sharp red fires in the night of leaves.
And noon is suddenly dark, is lustrous, is silent and dark
men are unseen, beneath the shading hats;
only, from out the foliage of the secret loins
red flamelets here and there reveal
a man, a woman there.
I DARE DO ALL
“ I DARE do all that may become a man.”
But tell me, oh tell me, what is becoming to a man!
Tell me first what I am,
that I may know what is unbecoming to me.
BATTLE OF LIFE
Is life strife, is it the long combat?
yes, it is true. I fight all the time.
I am forced to.
Yet I am not interested in fight, in strife, in combat,
I am only involved.
THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE
THERE are too many people on earth
insipid, unsalted, rabbity, endlessly hopping.
They nibble the face of the earth to a desert.
THE HEART OF MAN
THERE is the other universe, of the heart of man
that we know nothing of. that we dare not explore.
A strange grey distance separates
our pale mind still from the pulsing continent
of the heart of man.
Fore-runners have barely landed on the shore
and no man knows, no woman knows
the mystery of the interior
when darker still than Congo or Amazon
flow the heart’s rivers of fulness, desire and distress.
MORAL CLOTHING
WHEN I am clothed I am a moral man,
and unclothed, the word has no meaning for me.
When I put on my coat, my coat has pockets
and in the pockets are things I require,
so I wish no man to pick my pocket
and I will pick the pocket of no man.
A man’s business is one of his pockets, his bank account too
his credit, his name, his wife even may be just another of his pockets.
And I loathe the thought of being a pilferer
a pick-pocket,
That is why business seems to me despicable,
and most love-affairs, just sneak-thief pocket-picking
of dressed-up people.
When I stand in my shirt I have no pockets
therefore no morality of pockets;
but still my nakedness is clothed with responsibility
towards those near and dear to me, my very next of kin.
I am not yet alone.
Only when I am stripped stark naked I am alone
and without morals, and without immorality.
The invisible gods have no moral truck with us.
And if stark naked I approach a fellow-man or fellow-woman
they must be naked too,
and none of us must expect morality of each other:
I am that I am, take it or leave it.
Offer me nothing but that which you are, stark and strange.
Let there be no accommodation at this issue.
BEHAVIOUR
IT is well to be disciplined in all the social usages
and to have manners for all occasions
as we have clothes.
It is absurd for me to display my naked soul at the tea-table.
If we are properly clothed and disciplined in the dining-room
or the street
then the private intimacy of friendship will be real and precious
and our naked contact will be rare and vivid and tremendous.
But when everybody goes round with soul half-bared, or quite
in promiscuous intimate appeal
then friendship is impossible
and naked embrace an anti-climax, humiliating and ridiculous.
THE HOSTILE SUN
SOMETIMES the sun turns hostile to men
when the daytime consciousness has got overweening
when thoughts are stiff, like old leaves
and ideas are hard, like acorns ready to fall.
Then the sun turns hostile to us
and bites at our throats and chests
as he bites at the stems of leaves in autumn, to make them fall.
Then we suffer, and though the sun bronzes us
we feel him strangling even more the issues of our soul
for he is hostile t
o all the old leafy foliage of our thoughts
and the old upward flowing of our sap, the pressure of our
upward flow of feeling
is against him.
Then only under the moon, cool and unconcerned
calm with the calm of scimitars and brilliant reaping hooks
sweeping the curve of space and moving the silence
we have peace.
THE CHURCH
IF I was a member of the Church of Rome
I should advocate reform:
the marriage of priests
the priests to wear rose-colour or magenta in the streets
to teach the Resurrection in the flesh
to start the year on Easter Sunday
to add the mystery of Joy-in-Resurrection to the Mass
to inculcate the new conception of the Risen Man.
THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES
THE Protestant Churches have had their day
and served their great purpose.
They knew the useful Godhead of Providence.
But now we have to go back to the Creative Godhead
which overshadows the other
and which we have lost.
LONELINESS
I NEVER know what people mean when they complain of loneliness.
To be alone is one of life’s greatest delights, thinking one’s
own thoughts,
doing one’s own little jobs, seeing the world beyond
and feeling oneself uninterrupted in the rooted connection
with the centre of all things.
THE UPROOTED
PEOPLE who complain of loneliness must have lost something,
lost some living connection with the cosmos, out of themselves,
lost their life-flow
like a plant whose roots are cut.
And they are crying like plants whose roots are cut.
But the presence of other people will not give them new rooted connection
it will only make them forget.
The thing to do is in solitude slowly and painfully put forth
new roots
into the unknown, and take root by oneself.
DELIGHT OF BEING ALONE
I KNOW no greater delight than the sheer delight of being alone.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 866