Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

by D. H. Lawrence

  I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,

  It is large, so large, I could not see it before,

  Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,

  Troubles, anxieties and pains.

  You are the call and I am the answer,

  You are the wish, and I the fulfilment,

  You are the night, and I the day.

  What else - it is perfect enough.

  It is perfectly complete,

  You and I,

  What more — ?

  Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.

  LIGHTNING

  I felt the lurch and halt of her heart

  Next my breast, where my own heart was beating;

  And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound,

  And strange in my blood-swept ears was the sound

  Of the words I kept repeating,

  Repeating with tightened arms, and the hot blood’s blindfold art.

  Her breath flew warm against my neck,

  Warm as a flame in the close night air;

  And the sense of her clinging flesh was sweet

  Where her arms and my neck’s blood-surge could meet.

  Holding her thus, did I care

  That the black night hid her from me, blotted out every speck?

  I leaned me forward to find her lips,

  And claim her utterly in a kiss,

  When the lightning flew across her face,

  And I saw her for the flaring space

  Of a second, afraid of the clips

  Of my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear of my kiss.

  A moment, like a wavering spark,

  Her face lay there before my breast,

  Pale love lost in a snow of fear,

  And guarded by a glittering tear,

  And lips apart with dumb cries;

  A moment, and she was taken again in the merciful dark.

  I heard the thunder, and felt the rain,

  And my arms fell loose, and I was dumb.

  Almost I hated her, she was so good.

  Hated myself, and the place, and my blood,

  Which burned with rage, as I bade her come

  Home, away home, ere the lightning floated forth again.

  SONG-DAY IN AUTUMN

  When the autumn roses

  Are heavy with dew,

  Before the mist discloses

  The leaf’s brown hue,

  You would, among the laughing hills

  Of yesterday

  Walk innocent in the daffodils,

  Coiffing up your auburn hair

  In a puritan fillet, a chaste white snare

  To catch and keep me with you there

  So far away.

  When from the autumn roses

  Trickles the dew,

  When the blue mist uncloses

  And the sun looks through,

  You from those startled hills

  Come away,

  Out of the withering daffodils;

  Thoughtful, and half afraid,

  Plaiting a heavy, auburn braid

  And coiling it round the wise brows of a maid

  Who was scared in her play.

  When in the autumn roses

  Creeps a bee,

  And a trembling flower encloses

  His ecstasy,

  You from your lonely walk

  Turn away,

  And leaning to me like a flower on its stalk,

  Wait among the beeches

  For your late bee who beseeches

  To creep through your loosened hair till he reaches,

  Your heart of dismay.

  AWARE

  Slowly the moon is rising out of the ruddy haze,

  Divesting herself of her golden shift, and so

  Emerging white and exquisite; and I in amaze

  See in the sky before me, a woman I did not know

  I loved, but there she goes and her beauty hurts my heart;

  I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.

  A PANG OF REMINISCENCE

  High and smaller goes the moon, she is small and very far from me,

  Wistful and candid, watching me wistfully, and I see

  Trembling blue in her pallor a tear that surely I have seen before,

  A tear which I had hoped that even hell held not again in store.

  A WHITE BLOSSOM

  A tiny moon as white and small as a single jasmine flower

  Leans all alone above my window, on night’s wintry bower,

  Liquid as lime-tree blossom, soft as brilliant water or rain

  She shines, the one white love of my youth, which all sin cannot stain.

  RED MOON-RISE

  The train in running across the weald has fallen into a steadier stroke

  So even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one unbroke

  Embrace of darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the loose

  And littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and we can use

  The open book of landscape no more, for the covers of darkness have shut upon

  Its written pages, and sky and earth and all between are closed in one.

  And we are smothered between the darkness, we close our eyes and say “Hush!” we try

  To escape in sleep the terror of this immense deep darkness, and we lie

  Wrapped up for sleep. And then, dear God, from out of the twofold darkness, red

  As if from the womb the moon arises, as if the twin-walled darkness had bled

  In one great spasm of birth and given us this new, red moon-rise

  Which lies on the knees of the darkness bloody, and makes us hide our eyes.

  The train beats frantic in haste, and struggles away

  From this ruddy terror of birth that has slid down

  From out of the loins of night to flame our way

  With fear; but God, I am glad, so glad that I drown

  My terror with joy of confirmation, for now

  Lies God all red before me, and I am glad,

  As the Magi were when they saw the rosy brow

  Of the Infant bless their constant folly which had

  Brought them thither to God: for now I know

  That the Womb is a great red passion whence rises all

  The shapeliness that decks us here-below:

  Yea like the fire that boils within this ball

  Of earth, and quickens all herself with flowers,

  God burns within the stiffened clay of us;

  And every flash of thought that we and ours

  Send up to heaven, and every movement, does

  Fly like a spark from this God-fire of passion;

  And pain of birth, and joy of begetting,

  And sweat of labour, and the meanest fashion

  Of fretting or of gladness, but the jetting

  Of a trail of the great fire against the sky

  Where we can see it, a jet from the innermost fire:

  And even in the watery shells that lie

  Alive within the oozy under-mire,

  A grain of this same fire I can descry.

  And then within the screaming birds that fly

  Across the lightning when the storm leaps higher;

  And then the swirling, flaming folk that try

  To come like fire-flames at their fierce desire,

  They are as earth’s dread, spurting flames that ply

  Awhile and gush forth death and their expire.

  And though it be love’s wet blue eyes that cry

  To hot love to relinquish its desire,

  Still in their depths I see the same red spark

  As rose tonight upon us from the dark.

  RETURN

  Now I am come again, you who have so desired

  My coming, why do you look away from me?

  Why does your cheek burn against me — have I inspired

  Such anger as sets your mouth unwontedly?

  Ah,
here I sit while you break the music beneath

  Your bow; for broken it is, and hurting to hear:

  Cease then from music — does anguish of absence bequeath

  Me only aloofness when I would draw near?

  THE APPEAL

  You, Helen, who see the stars

  As mistletoe berries burning in a black tree,

  You surely, seeing I am a bowl of kisses,

  Should put your mouth to mine and drink of me.

  Helen, you let my kisses steam

  Wasteful into the night’s black nostrils; drink

  Me up I pray; oh you who are Night’s Bacchante,

  How can you from my bowl of kisses shrink!

  REPULSED

  The last, silk-floating thought has gone from the dandelion stem,

  And the flesh of the stalk holds up for nothing a blank diadem.

  The night’s flood-winds have lifted my last desire from me,

  And my hollow flesh stands up in the night abandonedly.

  As I stand on this hill, with the whitening cave of the city beyond,

  Helen, I am despoiled of my pride, and my soul turns fond:

  Overhead the nightly heavens like an open, immense eye.

  Like a cat’s distended pupil sparkles with sudden stars,

  As with thoughts that flash and crackle in uncouth malignancy

  They glitter at me, and I fear the fierce snapping of night’s thought-stars.

  Beyond me, up the darkness, goes the gush of the lights of two towns,

  As the breath which rushes upwards from the nostrils of an immense

  Life crouched across the globe, ready, if need be, to pounce

  Across the space upon heaven’s high hostile eminence.

  All round me, but far away, the night’s twin consciousness roars

  With sounds that endlessly swell and sink like the storm of thought in the brain.

  Lifting and falling like slow breaths taken, pulsing like oars

  Immense that beat the blood of the night down its vein.

  The night is immense and awful, Helen, and I am insect small

  In the fur of this hill, clung on to the fur of shaggy, black heather.

  A palpitant speck in the fur of the night, and afraid of all,

  Seeing the world and the sky like creatures hostile together.

  And I in the fur of the world, and you a pale fleck from the sky,

  How we hate each other to-night, hate, you and I,

  As the world of activity hates the dream that goes on on high,

  As a man hates the dreaming woman he loves, but who will not reply.

  DREAM-CONFUSED

  Is that the moon

  At the window so big and red?

  No-one in the room?

  No-one near the bed?

  Listen, her shoon

  Palpitating down the stair!

  - Or a best of wings at the window there?

  A moment ago

  She kissed me warm on the mouth;

  The very moon in the south

  Is warm with a ruddy glow;

  The moon, from far abysses

  Signalling those two kisses.

  And now the moon

  Goes clouded, having misunderstood.

  And slowly back in my blood

  My kisses are sinking, soon

  To be under the flood.

  We misunderstood!

  COROT

  The trees rise tall and taller, lifted

  On a subtle rush of cool grey flame

  That issuing out of the dawn has sifted

  The spirit from each leafs frame.

  For the trailing, leisurely rapture of life

  Drifts dimly forward, easily hidden

  By bright leaves uttered aloud, and strife

  Of shapes in the grey mist chidden.

  The grey, phosphorescent, pellucid advance

  Of the luminous purpose of God, shines out

  Where the lofty trees athwart stream chance

  To shake flakes of its shadow about.

  The subtle, steady rush of the whole

  Grey foam-mist of advancing God,

  As He silently sweeps to His somewhere, his goal,

  Is heard in the grass of the sod.

  Is heard in the windless whisper of leaves

  In the silent labours of men in the fields.

  In the downward dropping of flimsy sheaves

  Of cloud the rain skies yield.

  In the tapping haste of a fallen leaf.

  In the flapping of red-roof smoke, and the small

  Foot-stepping tap of men beneath

  These trees so huge and tall,

  For what can all sharp-rimmed substance but catch

  In a backward ripple, God’s purpose, reveal

  For a moment His mighty direction, snatch

  A spark beneath His wheel.

  Since God sweeps onward dim and vast,

  Creating the channelled vein of Man

  And Leaf for His passage. His shadow is cast

  On all for us to scan.

  Ah listen, for Silence is not lonely:

  Imitate the magnificent trees

  That speak no word of their rapture, but only

  Breathe largely the luminous breeze.

  MORNING WORK

  A GANG of labourers on the piled wet timber

  That shines blood-red beside the railway siding

  Seem to be making out of the blue of the morning

  Something faery and fine, the shuttles sliding,

  The red-gold spools of their hands and faces shuttling

  Hither and thither across the morn’s crystalline frame

  Of blue: trolls at the cave of ringing cerulean mining,

  And laughing with work, living their work like a game.

  TRANSFORMATIONS

  I

  The Town

  Oh you stiff shapes, swift transformation seethes

  About you: only last night you were

  A Sodom smouldering in the dense, soiled air;

  To-day a thicket of sunshine with blue smoke- wreaths.

  To-morrow swimming in evening’s vague, dim vapour

  Like a weeded city in shadow under the sea,

  Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be:

  Then a group of toadstools waiting the moon’s white taper.

  And when I awake in the morning, after rain,

  To find the new houses a cluster of lilies glittering

  In scarlet, alive with the birds’ bright twittering,

  I’ll say your bond of ugliness is vain.

  II

  The Earth

  Oh Earth, you spinning clod of earth.

  And then you lamp, you lemon-coloured beauty;

  Oh Earth, you rotten apple rolling downward,

  Then brilliant Earth, from the burr of night in beauty

  As a jewel-brown horse-chestnut newly issued: —

  You are all these, and strange, it is my duty

  To take you all, sordid or radiant tissued.

  III

  Men

  Oh labourers, oh shuttles across the blue frame of morning,

  You feet of the rainbow balancing the sky!

  Oh you who flash your arms like rockets to heaven,

  Who in lassitude lean as yachts on the sea-wind lie!

  You who in crowds are rhododendrons in blossom,

  Who stand alone in pride like lighted lamps;

  Who grappling down with work or hate or passion.

  Take strange lithe form of a beast that sweats and ramps:

  You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves,

  Who curl in sleep like kittens, who kiss as a swarm

  Of clustered, vibrating bees; who fall to earth

  At last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform?

  RENASCENCE

  We have bit no forbidden apple,

  Eve and I,

  Yet the splashes of day and night />
  Falling round us no longer dapple

  The same Eden with purple and white.

  This is our own still valley

  Our Eden, our home,

  But day shows it vivid with feeling

  And the pallor of night does not tally

  With dark sleep that once covered its ceiling.

  My little red heifer, to-night I looked in her eyes,

  — She will calve to-morrow:

  Last night when I went with the lantern, the sow was grabbing her litter

  With red, snarling jaws: and I heard the cries

  Of the new-born, and after that, the old owl, then the bats that flitter.

  And I woke to the sound of the wood-pigeons, and lay and listened,

  Till I could borrow

  A few quick beats of a wood-pigeon’s heart, and when

  I did rise

  The morning sun on the shaken iris glistened,

  And I saw that home, this valley, was wider than

  Paradise,

  I learned it all from my Eve

  This warm, dumb wisdom.

  She’s a finer instructress than years;

  She has taught my heart-strings to weave

  Through the web of all laughter and tears.

  And now I see the valley

  Fleshed all like me

  With feelings that change and quiver:

  And all things seem to tally

  With something in me,

  Something of which she’s the giver.

  DOG-TIRED

  If she would come to me here

  Now the sunken swaths

  Are glittering paths

  To the sun, and the swallows cut clear

  Into the setting sun! if she came to me here!

  If she would come to me now,

  Before the last-mown harebells are dead;