Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

by D. H. Lawrence

  Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering

  rushes.

  I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

  Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

  Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,

  Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

  And I, what fountain of fire am I among

  This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is

  tossed

  About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

  Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

  REPROACH

  HAD I but known yesterday,

  Helen, you could discharge the ache

  Out of the cloud;

  Had I known yesterday you could take

  The turgid electric ache away,

  Drink it up with your proud

  White body, as lovely white lightning

  Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,

  I might have hated you, Helen.

  But since my limbs gushed full of fire,

  Since from out of my blood and bone

  Poured a heavy flame

  To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone

  Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,

  You have no name.

  Earth of my swaying atmosphere,

  Substance of my inconstant breath,

  I cannot but cleave to you.

  Since you have drunken up the drear

  Painful electric storm, and death

  Is washed from the blue

  Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.

  You are strong and passive and beautiful,

  I come like winds that uncertain hover;

  But you

  Are the earth I hover over.

  THE HANDS OF THE BETROTHED

  HER tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,

  Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;

  Yea, and her mouth’s prudent and crude caress

  Means even less than her many words to me.

  Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only

  Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax

  clips

  Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely

  Fruit of my heart, ere down, rebuked, it slips.

  I know from her hardened lips that still her heart is

  Hungry for me, yet if I put my hand in her breast

  She puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart is

  Endangered by the pilferer on his quest.

  But her hands are still the woman, the large, strong

  hands

  Heavier than mine, yet like leverets caught in

  steel

  When I hold them; my still soul understands

  Their dumb confession of what her sort must feel.

  For never her hands come nigh me but they lift

  Like heavy birds from the morning stubble, to

  settle

  Upon me like sleeping birds, like birds that shift

  Uneasily in their sleep, disturbing my mettle.

  How caressingly she lays her hand on my knee,

  How strangely she tries to disown it, as it sinks

  In my flesh and bone and forages into me,

  How it stirs like a subtle stoat, whatever she

  thinks!

  And often I see her clench her fingers tight

  And thrust her fists suppressed in the folds of her

  skirt;

  And sometimes, how she grasps her arms with her

  bright

  Big hands, as if surely her arms did hurt.

  And I have seen her stand all unaware

  Pressing her spread hands over her breasts, as she

  Would crush their mounds on her heart, to kill in

  there

  The pain that is her simple ache for me.

  Her strong hands take my part, the part of a man

  To her; she crushes them into her bosom deep

  Where I should lie, and with her own strong

  span

  Closes her arms, that should fold me in sleep.

  Ah, and she puts her hands upon the wall,

  Presses them there, and kisses her bright hands,

  Then lets her black hair loose, the darkness fall

  About her from her maiden-folded bands.

  And sits in her own dark night of her bitter hair

  Dreaming — God knows of what, for to me she’s

  the same

  Betrothed young lady who loves me, and takes care

  Of her womanly virtue and of my good name.

  EXCURSION

  I WONDER, can the night go by;

  Can this shot arrow of travel fly

  Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky

  Of a dawned to-morrow,

  Without ever sleep delivering us

  From each other, or loosing the dolorous

  Unfruitful sorrow!

  What is it then that you can see

  That at the window endlessly

  You watch the red sparks whirl and flee

  And the night look through?

  Your presence peering lonelily there

  Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear

  To share the train with you.

  You hurt my heart-beats’ privacy;

  I wish I could put you away from me;

  I suffocate in this intimacy,

  For all that I love you;

  How I have longed for this night in the train,

  Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain

  To God to remove you.

  But surely my soul’s best dream is still

  That one night pouring down shall swill

  Us away in an utter sleep, until

  We are one, smooth-rounded.

  Yet closely bitten in to me

  Is this armour of stiff reluctancy

  That keeps me impounded.

  So, dear love, when another night

  Pours on us, lift your fingers white

  And strip me naked, touch me light,

  Light, light all over.

  For I ache most earnestly for your touch,

  Yet I cannot move, however much

  I would be your lover.

  Night after night with a blemish of day

  Unblown and unblossomed has withered away;

  Come another night, come a new night, say

  Will you pluck me apart?

  Will you open the amorous, aching bud

  Of my body, and loose the burning flood

  That would leap to you from my heart?

  PERFIDY

  HOLLOW rang the house when I knocked on the door,

  And I lingered on the threshold with my hand

  Upraised to knock and knock once more:

  Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,

  Hollow re-echoed my heart.

  The low-hung lamps stretched down the road

  With shadows drifting underneath,

  With a music of soft, melodious feet

  Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet

  The low-hung light of her eyes.

  The golden lamps down the street went out,

  The last car trailed the night behind;

  And I in the darkness wandered about

  With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt

  In the dying lamp of my love.

  Two brown ponies trotting slowly

  Stopped at a dim-lit trough to drink:

  The dark van drummed down the distance slowly;

  While the city stars so dim and holy

  Drew nearer to search through the streets.

  A hastening car swept shameful past,

  I saw her hid in the shadow,

  I saw her step to the curb, and fast

  Run to the silent door, where last

  I had stood with my hand uplifted.

  She clung to the door in her haste to enter,

>   Entered, and quickly cast

  It shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.

  A SPIRITUAL WOMAN

  CLOSE your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;

  They have taught you to see

  Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,

  A cunning algebra in the faces of men,

  And God like geometry

  Completing his circles, and working cleverly.

  I’ll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;

  If I can — if any one could.

  Then perhaps in the dark you’ll have got what you

  want to find.

  You’ve discovered so many bits, with your clever

  eyes,

  And I’m a kaleidoscope

  That you shake and shake, and yet it won’t come to

  your mind.

  Now stop carping at me. — But God, how I hate you!

  Do you fear I shall swindle you?

  Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will

  abate you

  Somehow? — so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so

  cautious, you

  Must have me all in your will and your consciousness —

  I hate you.

  MATING

  ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind,

  The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,

  And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,

  The wild anemones lie

  In undulating shivers beneath the wind.

  Over the blue of the waters ply

  White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;

  And, look you, floating just thereby,

  The blue-gleamed drake stems proud

  Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.

  In the lustrous gleam of the water, there

  Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,

  Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share

  The darkness that interweaves

  The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.

  Look now, through the woods where the beech-green

  spurts

  Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see

  A great bay stallion dances, skirts

  The bushes sumptuously,

  Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.

  Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,

  What sudden expectation opens you

  So wide as you watch the catkins blow

  Their dust from the birch on the blue

  Lift of the pulsing wind — ah, tell me you know!

  Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun

  A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all

  Us creatures, people and flowers undone,

  Lying open under his thrall,

  As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you

  shun?

  Why, I should think that from the earth there fly

  Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams

  Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high

  Bursting globe of dreams,

  To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.

  Do you not hear each morsel thrill

  With joy at travelling to plant itself within

  The expectant one, therein to instil

  New rapture, new shape to win,

  From the thick of life wake up another will?

  Surely, and if that I would spill

  The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,

  From off my brimming measure, to fill

  You, and flush you rife

  With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?

  A LOVE SONG

  REJECT me not if I should say to you

  I do forget the sounding of your voice,

  I do forget your eyes that searching through

  The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice.

  Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide

  Under the pallid moonlight’s fingering,

  I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide

  My eyes from diligent work, malingering.

  Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw

  The blind to hide the garden, where the moon

  Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw

  Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.

  And I do lift my aching arms to you,

  And I do lift my anguished, avid breast,

  And I do weep for very pain of you,

  And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest.

  And I do toss through the troubled night for you,

  Dreaming your yielded mouth is given to mine,

  Feeling your strong breast carry me on into

  The peace where sleep is stronger even than wine.

  BROTHER AND SISTER

  THE shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path,

  Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky,

  Draws towards the downward slope; some sorrow

  hath

  Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares

  Along her foot-searched way without knowing why

  She creeps persistent down the sky’s long stairs.

  Some say they see, though I have never seen,

  The dead moon heaped within the new moon’s arms;

  For surely the fragile, fine young thing had been

  Too heavily burdened to mount the heavens so.

  But my heart stands still, as a new, strong dread

  alarms

  Me; might a young girl be heaped with such shadow

  of woe?

  Since Death from the mother moon has pared us

  down to the quick,

  And cast us forth like shorn, thin moons, to travel

  An uncharted way among the myriad thick

  Strewn stars of silent people, and luminous litter

  Of lives which sorrows like mischievous dark mice

  chavel

  To nought, diminishing each star’s glitter,

  Since Death has delivered us utterly, naked and

  white,

  Since the month of childhood is over, and we stand

  alone,

  Since the beloved, faded moon that set us alight

  Is delivered from us and pays no heed though we

  moan

  In sorrow, since we stand in bewilderment, strange

  And fearful to sally forth down the sky’s long range.

  We may not cry to her still to sustain us here,

  We may not hold her shadow back from the dark.

  Oh, let us here forget, let us take the sheer

  Unknown that lies before us, bearing the ark

  Of the covenant onwards where she cannot go.

  Let us rise and leave her now, she will never know.

  AFTER MANY DAYS

  I WONDER if with you, as it is with me,

  If under your slipping words, that easily flow

  About you as a garment, easily,

  Your violent heart beats to and fro!

  Long have I waited, never once confessed,

  Even to myself, how bitter the separation;

  Now, being come again, how make the best

  Reparation?

  If I could cast this clothing off from me,

  If I could lift my naked self to you,

  Or if only you would repulse me, a wound would be

  Good; it would let the ache come through.

  But that you hold me still so kindly cold

  Aloof my flaming heart will not allow;

  Yea, but I loathe you that you should withhold

  Your pleasure now.

  BLUE

  THE earth again like a ship steams out of the dark

  sea over

  The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see

  us glide

  Slowly into another day; slowly the rover

  Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.r />
  I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting

  Me who am issued amazed from the darkness,

  stripped

  And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from

  haunting

  The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.

  Feeling myself undawning, the day’s light playing

  upon me,

  I who am substance of shadow, I all compact

  Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly

  Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled

  and racked.

  I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence

  of death;

  And what do I care though the very stones should

  cry me unreal, though the clouds

  Shine in conceit of substance upon me, who am less

  than the rain.

  Do I not know the darkness within them? What

  are they but shrouds?

  The clouds go down the sky with a wealthy ease

  Casting a shadow of scorn upon me for my share in

  death; but I

  Hold my own in the midst of them, darkling, defy

  The whole of the day to extinguish the shadow I lift

  on the breeze.

  Yea, though the very clouds have vantage over

  me,

  Enjoying their glancing flight, though my love is

  dead,

  I still am not homeless here, I’ve a tent by day

  Of darkness where she sleeps on her perfect bed.

  And I know the host, the minute sparkling of darkness Which vibrates untouched and virile through the grandeur of night, But which, when dawn crows challenge, assaulting the vivid motes Of living darkness, bursts fretfully, and is bright:

  Runs like a fretted arc-lamp into light,

  Stirred by conflict to shining, which else

  Were dark and whole with the night.

  Runs to a fret of speed like a racing wheel,