CONCEIT
IT is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.
Under the great Command: Know thyself, and that thou art mortal!
we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important,
fatally entangled in the Laocoon coils of our conceit.
Now we have to admit we can’t know ourselves, we can only
know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more
I only entangle myself in the knowing.
Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.
MAN IS MORE THAN HOMO SAPIENS
MAN is not quite a man
unless he has his pure moments, when he is surpassing.
I saw an angry Italian seize an irritating little official by the throat
and all but squeeze the life out of him:
and Jesus himself could not have denied that at that moment
the angry man
was a god, in godliness pure as Christ, beautiful
but perhaps Ashtaroth, perhaps Siva, perhaps Huitzilopochtli
with the dark and gleaming beauty of the messageless gods.
SELF-CONSCIOUS PEOPLE
O ARE you tangled up in yourself
poor little man, poor little man!
Is she tangled up in herself then
poor woman, poor woman!
But beware!
They are like cats with unclean claws, tangled up in nets,
and if you try to get them out
they will tear you terribly, and give you blood-poisoning.
TWO WAYS OF LIVING AND DYING
WHILE people live the life
they are open to the restless skies, and streams flow in and out
darkly from the fecund cosmos, from the angry red sun, from
the moon
up from the bounding earth, strange pregnant streams, in and
out of the flesh,
and man is an iridescent fountain, rising up to flower
for a moment godly, like Baal or Krishna, or Adonis, or Balder,
or Lucifer.
But when people are only self-conscious and self-willed
they cannot die, their corpse still runs on,
while nothing comes from the open heaven, from earth, from
the sun and moon
to them, nothing, nothing;
only the mechanical power of self-directed energy
drives them on and on, like machines,
on and on, and their triumph in mere motion
full of friction, full of grinding, full of danger to the gentle passengers
of growing life,
but on and on, on and on, till the friction wears them out
and the machine begins to wobble
and with hideous shrieks of steely rage and frustration
the worn-out machine at last breaks down:
it is finished, its race is over.
So self-willed, self-centred, self-conscious people die
the death of nothingness, worn-out machines, kaput!
But when living people die in the ripeness of their time
terrible and strange the god lies on the bed, -wistful, coldly wonderful,
beyond us, now beyond, departing with that purity
that flickered forth in the best hours of life,
when the man was himself, so a god in his singleness,
and the woman was herself, never to be duplicated, a goddess there
gleaming her hour in life as she now gleams in death
and departing inviolate, nothing can lay hand on her,
she who at her best hours was herself, warm, flickering, herself,
therefore a goddess,
and who now draws slowly away, cold, the wistful goddess receding.
SO LET ME LIVE
So let me live that I may die
eagerly passing over from the entanglement of life
to the adventure of death, in eagerness
turning to death as I turn to beauty
to the breath, that is, of new beauty unfolding in death.
GLADNESS OF DEATH
OH death
about you I know nothing, nothing —
about the afterwards
as a matter of fact, we know nothing.
yet of death, oh death
also I know so much about you
the knowledge is within me, without being a matter of fact.
And so I know
after the painful, painful experience of dying
there comes an after-gladness, a strange joy
in a great adventure
oh the great adventure of death, where Thomas Cook cannot
guide us.
I have always wanted to be as the flowers are
so unhampered in their living and dying,
and in death I believe I shall be as the flowers are.
I shall blossom like a dark pansy, and be delighted
there among the dark sun-rays of death.
I can feel myself unfolding in the dark sunshine of death
to something flowery and fulfilled, and with a strange sweet perfume.
Men prevent one another from being men
but in the great spaces of death
the winds of the afterwards kiss us into blossom of manhood.
HUMANITY NEEDS PRUNING
HUMANITY needs pruning
It is like a vast great tree with a great lot of sterile, dead.
rotting wood
and an amount of fungoid and parasitic growth.
The tree of humanity needs pruning, badly,
it needs thoroughly pruning, not as in the late war, blasting
with unintelligent and evil destruction
but pruning, severely, intelligently and ruthlessly pruning.
The tree of human existence needs badly pruning
or the whole tree may fall rotten.
SELF-SACRIFICE
SELF-SACRIFICE, after all, is a wrong and mistaken idea.
It cannot be anything but wrong to sacrifice
good, healthy, natural feelings, instincts, passions or desires,
just as it cannot be anything but wrong to cut the throats
of doves for Venus, or steers for Hermes,
if it is merely Venus or Hermes you are thinking of.
Venus would rather have live doves than dead, if you want to
make an offering.
If you want to make her an offering, let the doves fly from
her altar.
But what we may sacrifice, if we call it sacrifice, from the self,
are all the obstructions to life, self-importance, self-conceit,
egoistic self-will,
or all the ugly old possessions that make up the impediments
of life,
ugly old furniture, ugly old books, ugly old buildings, ugly old
“ art,”
anything that belongs to us, and is ugly and an impediment
to the free motion of life
sacrifice that to the bright gods, and satisfy the destructive instinct.
SHEDDING OF BLOOD
“ WITHOUT shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.”
What does it mean?
Does it mean that life which has gone ugly and unliving is sin
and the blood of it must be spilt?
O spill the blood, not of your firstling lamb, without spot or blemish,
but kill the scabbed and ugly lamb, that spreads contagion.
O slay, not the bright proud life that is in you, that can be happy,
but the craven, the cowardly, the creeping you, that can only
be unhappy, kill it, the unliving thing.
O sacrifice, not that which is noble and generous and
spontaneous in humanity
but that wh
ich is mean and base and squalid and degenerate,
destroy it, shed its unclean blood, kill it, put it out of existence.
O shed the unclean, mean, cowardly, greedy, egoistic, de —
generate blood
and let mankind make new blood, fresh and bright.
THE OLD IDEA OF SACRIFICE
THE old idea of sacrifice was this:
that blood of the lower life must be shed
for the feeding and strengthening of the handsomer, fuller life.
O when the old world sacrificed a ram
it was to the gods who make us splendid
and it was for a feast, a feast of meat, for men and maids
on a day of splendour, for the further splendour of being men.
It was the eating up of little lives,
even doves, even small birds
into the dance and splendour of a bigger life.
There is no such thing as sin.
There is only life and anti-life.
And sacrifice is the law of life which enacts
that little lives must be eaten up into the dance and splendour
of bigger lives, with due reverence and acknowledgement.
SELF-SACRIFICE
SELF-SACRIFICE is perhaps the vilest deed a man can do.
The self that we are, at its best, is all that we are
is the very individual flame of life itself
which is the man’s pure self.
And to sacrifice that, to anything or anybody whatsoever
is the vilest cowardice and treachery.
Yet a woman can add her flame to a man’s
or a man can add his flame to the flame of another man
as a gift of gladness, seeing the glamour of life go up
swifter and higher and brighter, for the yielding and the
adding together.
I HEARD A LITTLE CHICKEN CHIRP
I HEARD a little chicken chirp:
My name is Thomas, Thomas Earp!
And I can neither paint nor write
I only can set other people right.
All people that can write or paint
do tremble under my complaint.
For I am a chicken, and I can chirp,
and my name is Thomas, Thomas Earp.
CROSS, COARSE, HIDEOUS
(Police description of my pictures.)
LATELY I saw a sight most quaint:
London’s lily-like policemen faint
in virgin outrage as they viewed
the nudity of a Lawrence nude!
MR SQUIRE
Dearly-beloved Mr Squire
so long as you lead the gawky choir
of critical cherubs that chirrup and pipe
in the weekly press their self-satisfied swipe.
Oh London’s Mercury, Sunday-School Squire
so long as you tune your turn-turn lyre
with its tinkle-winkle and tweeddle-dee
to the lesser fry in the hierarchy.
So long will they lift their impertinent voices
and chirrup their almost indecent noises
almost as empty as belching or hiccup
in grand chorale to your monthly kick-up.
So now we beg you, Mr Squire
do now once forever, retire
and leave the critical piggy-wiggies.
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
IF ever there was a beginning
there was no god in it
there was no Verb
no Voice
no Word.
There was nothing to say:
Let there be light!
All that story of Mr God switching on day
is just conceit.
Just man’s conceit!
— Who made the Sun?
— My child, I cannot tell a lie,
I made it!
George Washington’s Grandpapa!
All we can honestly imagine in the beginning
is the incomprehensible plasm of life, of creation struggling
and becoming light.
GOD IS BORN
THE history of the cosmos
is the history of the struggle of becoming.
When the dim flux of unformed life
struggled, convulsed back and forth upon itself,
and broke at last into light and dark
came into existence as light,
came into existence as cold shadow —
then every atom of the cosmos trembled with delight.
Behold, God is born!
He is bright light!
He is pitch dark and cold!
And in the great struggle of intangible chaos
when, at a certain point, a drop of water began to downwards
and a breath of vapour began to wreathe up
Lo again the shudder of bliss through all the atoms!
Oh, God is born!
Behold, he is born wet!
Look, He hath movement upward! He spirals!
And so, in the great aeons of accomplishment and debacle
from time to time the wild crying of every electron:
Lo! God is born.
When sapphires cooled out of molten chaos:
See, God is born! He is blue, he is deep blue, he is for ever blue!
When gold lay shining threading the cooled-off rock:
God is born! God is born! bright yellow and ductile He is born.
When the little eggy amoeba emerged out of foam and nowhere
then all the electrons held their breath:
Ach! Ach! Now indeed God is born! He twinkles within.
When from a world of mosses and of ferns
at last the narcissus lifted a tuft of five-point stars
and dangled them in the atmosphere,
then every molecule of creation jumped and clapped its hands:
God is born! God is born perfumed and dangling and with a
little cup!
Throughout the aeons, as the lizard swirls his tail finer than water,
as the peacock turns to the sun, and could not be more splendid,
as the leopard smites the small calf with a spangled paw, perfect,
the universe trembles: God is born! God is here!
And when at last man stood on two legs and wondered,
then there was a hush of suspense at the core of every electron:
Behold, now very God is born!
God Himself is born!
And so we see, God is not
until he is born.
And also we see
there is no end to the birth of God.
THE WHITE HORSE
THE youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on
and the horse looks at him in silence.
They are so silent they are in another world.
FLOWERS AND MEN
FLOWERS achieve their own floweriness and it is a miracle.
Men don’t achieve their own manhood, alas, oh alas! alas!
All I want of you, men and women,
all I want of you
is that you shall achieve your beauty
as the flowers do.
Oh leave off saying I want you to be savages.
Tell me, is the gentian savage, at the top of its coarse stem?
Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?
... as the gentian and the daffodil. . . .
Tell me! tell me! is there in you a beauty to compare
to the honeysuckle at evening now
pouring out his breath.
PRAYER
GIVE me the moon at my feet
Put my feet upon the crescent, like a Lord!
O let my ankles be bathed in moonlight, that I may go
sure and moon-shod, cool and bright-footed
towards my goal.
For the sun is hostile, now
his face is like the red lion,
SHIP OF DEATH
I SING of autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
Have you built your ship of death, oh, have you?
Build then your ship of death, for you will need it!
Can man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life
but is that a quietus, oh tell me, is it quietus?
Quietus is the goal of the long journey
the longest journey towards oblivion.
Slips out the soul, invisible one, wrapped still
in the white shirt of the mind’s experiences
and folded in the dark-red, unseen
mantle of the body’s still mortal memories.
Frightened and alone, the soul slips out of the house
or is pushed out
to find himself on the crowded, arid margins of existence.
Oh, it is not so easy, I tell you it is not so easy
to set softly forth on the longest journey, the longest journey.
It is easy to be pushed out of the silvery city of the body
through any breach in the wall,
thrust out on to the grey grey beaches of shadow
the long marginal stretches of existence, crowded with lost souls
that intervene between our tower and the shaking sea of the beyond.
Oh build your ship of death, oh build it in time
and build it lovingly, and put it between the hands of your soul.
Once outside the gate of the walled silvery life of days
once outside, upon the grey marsh beaches, where lost souls moan
in millions, unable to depart
having no boat to launch upon the shaken, soundless
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 872