Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence

by D. H. Lawrence

  In the last twilight

  Of Indian gods;

  And they can’t wake.

  Indians dance and run and stamp —

  No good.

  White men make gold-mines and the mountains unmake them

  In their sleep.

  The Indians laugh in their sleep

  From fear,

  Like a man when he sleeps and his sleep is over, and he

  can’t wake up,

  And he lies like a log and screams and his scream is silent

  Because his body can’t wake up;

  So he laughs from fear, pure fear, in the grip of the sleep.

  A dark membrane over the will, holding a man down

  Even when the mind has flickered awake;

  A membrane of sleep, like a black blanket.

  We walk in our sleep, in this land,

  Somnambulist wide-eyed afraid.

  We scream for someone to wake us

  And our scream is soundless in the paralysis of sleep,

  And we know it.

  The Penitentes lash themselves till they run with blood

  In their efforts to come awake for one moment;

  To tear the membrane of this sleep . . .

  No good.

  The Indians thought the white man would awake them . . .

  And instead, the white men scramble asleep in the mountains,

  And ride on horseback asleep forever through the desert,

  And shoot one another, amazed and mad with somnambulism,

  Thinking death will awaken something . . .

  No good.

  Born with a caul,

  A black membrane over the face,

  And unable to tear it,

  Though the mind is awake.

  Mountains blanket-wrapped

  Round the ash-white hearth of the desert;

  And though the sun leaps like a thing unleashed in the sky

  They can’t get up, they are under the blanket.

  Taos.

  AUTUMN AT TAOS

  OVER the rounded sides of the Rockies, the aspens of autumn,

  The aspens of autumn,

  Like yellow hair of a tigress brindled with pins.

  Down on my hearth-rug of desert, sage of the mesa,

  An ash-grey pelt

  Of wolf all hairy and level, a wolf’s wild pelt.

  Trot-trot to the mottled foot-hills, cedar-mottled and piñon;

  Did you ever see an otter?

  Silvery-sided, fish-fanged, fierce-faced whiskered, mottled.

  When I trot my little pony through the aspen-trees of the

  canyon,

  Behold me trotting at ease betwixt the slopes of the golden

  Great and glistening-feathered legs of the hawk of Horus;

  The golden hawk of Horus

  Astride above me.

  But under the pines

  I go slowly

  As under the hairy belly of a great black bear.

  Glad to emerge and look back

  On the yellow, pointed aspen-trees laid one on another like

  Feathers,

  Feather over feather on the breast of the great and golden

  Hawk as I say of Horus.

  Pleased to be out in the sage and the pine fish-dotted foot —

  hills,

  Past the otter’s whiskers,

  On to the fur of the wolf-pelt that strews the plain.

  And then to look back to the rounded sides of the squatting

  Rockies,

  Tigress brindled with aspen

  Jaguar-splashed, puma-yellow, leopard-livid slopes of America.

  Make big eyes, little pony

  At all these skins of wild beasts;

  They won’t hurt you.

  Fangs and claws and talons and beaks and hawk-eyes

  Are nerveless just now.

  So be easy.

  Taos.

  SPIRITS SUMMONED WEST

  ENGLAND seems full of graves to me,

  Full of graves.

  Women I loved and cherished, like my mother;

  Yet I had to tell them to die.

  England seems covered with graves to me.

  Women’s graves.

  Women who were gentle

  And who loved me

  And whom I loved

  And told to die.

  Women with the beautiful eyes of the old days,

  Belief in love, and sorrow of such belief.

  “Hush, my love, then, hush.

  Hush, and die, my dear!”

  Women of the older generation, who knew

  The full doom of loving and not being able to take back.

  Who understood at last what it was to be told to die.

  Now that the graves are made, and covered;

  Now that in England pansies and such-like grow on the

  graves of women;

  Now that in England is silence, where before was a moving

  of soft-skirted women,

  Women with eyes that were gentle in olden belief in

  love;

  Now then that all their yearning is hushed, and covered

  over with earth.

  England seems like one grave to me.

  And I, I sit on this high American desert

  With dark-wrapped Rocky Mountains motionless squatting

  around in a ring,

  Remembering I told them to die, to sink into the grave in

  England,

  The gentle-kneed women.

  So now I whisper: Come away,

  Come away from the place of graves, come west,

  Women,

  Women whom I loved and told to die.

  Come back to me now,

  Now the divided yearning is over;

  Now you are husbandless indeed, no more husband to cherish like

  a child

  And wrestle tvith for the prize of perfect love.

  No more children to launch in a world you mistrust.

  Now you need know in part

  No longer, or carry the burden of a man on your heart,

  Or the burden of Man writ large.

  Now you are disemburdened of Man and a man

  Come back to me.

  Now you are free of the toils of a would-be-perfect love

  Come to me and be still.

  Come back then, you who were wives and mothers

  And always virgins

  Overlooked.

  Come back then, mother, my love, whom I told to die.

  It was only I who saw the virgin you

  That had no home.

  The overlooked virgin,

  My love.

  You overlooked her too.

  Now that the grave is made of mother and wife,

  Now that the grave is made and lidded over with turf.

  Come, delicate, overlooked virgin, come back to me

  And be still,

  Be glad.

  I didn’t tell you to die, for nothing.

  I wanted the virgin you to be home at last

  In my heart.

  Inside my innermost heart,

  Where the virgin in woman comes home to a man.

  The homeless virgin

  Who never in all her life could find the way home

  To that difficult innermost place in a man.

  Now come west, come home,

  Women I’ve loved for gentleness,

  For the virginal you.

  Find the way now that you never could find in life,

  So I told you to die.

  Virginal first and last

  Is woman.

  Now at this last, my love, my many a love,

  You whom I loved for gentleness,

  Come home to me.

  They are many, and I loved them, shall always love them,

  And they know it,

  The virgins.

  And my heart is glad to have them at last.

  Now that the wife and mother and mistress is buried in earth,
r />   In English earth,

  Come home to me, my love, my loves, my many loves,

  Come west to me.

  For virgins are not exclusive of virgins

  As wives are of wives;

  And motherhood is jealous,

  But in virginity jealousy does not enter.

  Taos.

  THE AMERICAN EAGLE

  THE dove of Liberty sat on an egg

  And hatched another eagle.

  But didn’t disown the bird.

  Down with all eagles! cooed the Dove.

  And down all eagles began to flutter, reeling from their

  perches:

  Eagles with two heads, eagles with one, presently eagles

  with none

  Fell from the hooks and were dead.

  Till the American Eagle was the only eagle left in the world.

  Then it began to fidget, shifting from one leg to the other,

  Trying to look like a pelican,

  And plucking out of his plumage a few loose feathers to

  feather the nests of all

  The new naked little republics come into the world.

  But the feathers were, comparatively, a mere flea-bite.

  And the bub-eagle that Liberty had hatched was growing a

  startling big bird

  On the roof of the world;

  A bit awkward, and with a funny squawk in his voice,

  His mother Liberty trying always to teach him to coo

  And him always ending with a yawp

  Coo! Coo! Coo! Coo-ark! Coo-ark! Quark!! Quark!!

  YAWP!!!

  So he clears his throat, the young Cock-eagle!

  Now if the lilies of France lick Solomon in all his glory;

  And the leopard cannot change his spots;

  Nor the British lion his appetite;

  Neither can a young Cock-eagle sit simpering

  With an olive-sprig in his mouth.

  It’s not his nature.

  The big bird of the Amerindian being the eagle,

  Red Men still stick themselves over with bits of his fluff,

  And feel absolutely IT.

  So better make up your mind, American Eagle,

  Whether you’re a sucking dove, Roo — coo — ooo! Quark!

  Yawp!!

  Or a pelican

  Handing out a few loose golden breast-feathers, at moulting

  time;

  Or a sort of prosperity-gander

  Fathering endless ten-dollar golden eggs.

  Or whether it actually is an eagle you are,

  With a Roman nose

  And claws not made to shake hands with,

  And a Me-Almighty eye.

  The new Proud Republic

  Based on the mystery of pride.

  Overweening men, full of power of life, commanding a

  teeming obedience.

  Eagle of the Rockies, bird of men that are masters,

  Lifting the rabbit-blood of the myriads up into something

  splendid,

  Leaving a few bones;

  Opening great wings in the face of the sheep-faced ewe

  Who is losing her lamb,

  Drinking a little blood, and loosing another royalty unto the

  world.

  Is that you, American Eagle?

  Or are you the goose that lays the golden egg?

  Which is just a stone to anyone asking for meat.

  And are you going to go on for ever

  Laying that golden egg,

  That addled golden egg?

  IMAGIST POETRY

  CONTENTS

  BALLAD OF ANOTHER OPHELIA

  ILLICIT

  FIREFLIES IN THE CORN

  A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND

  THE MOWERS

  SCENT OF IRISES

  GREEN

  BALLAD OF ANOTHER OPHELIA

  Oh, the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,

  Lamps in a wash of rain,

  Oh, the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,

  Oh, tears on the window pane!

  Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,

  Full of disappointment and of rain,

  Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples

  Of Autumn tell the withered tale again.

  All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,

  Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,

  Cluck, my marigold bird, and again

  Cluck for your yellow darlings.

  For the grey rat found the gold thirteen

  Huddled away in the dark,

  Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,

  Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.

  ····

  Once I had a lover bright like running water,

  Once his face was laughing like the sky;

  Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter

  On the buttercups — and buttercups was I.

  What then is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom,

  What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?

  ‘T is the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom —

  What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men?

  Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,

  And her shift is lying white upon the floor,

  That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm

  Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.

  Oh, the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,

  Oh, the golden sparkles laid extinct — !

  And oh, behind the cloud sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,

  Did you see the wicked sun that winked?

  ILLICIT

  In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow,

  And between us and it, the thunder;

  And down below, in the green wheat, the labourers

  Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.

  You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals,

  And through the scent of the balcony’s naked timber

  I distinguish the scent of your hair; so now the limber

  Lightning falls from heaven.

  Adown the pale-green, glacier-river floats

  A dark boat through the gloom — and whither?

  The thunder roars. But still we have each other.

  The naked lightnings in the heaven dither

  And disappear. What have we but each other?

  The boat has gone.

  FIREFLIES IN THE CORN

  A Woman taunts her Lover

  Look at the little darlings in the corn!

  The rye is taller than you, who think yourself

  So high and mighty: look how its heads are borne

  Dark and proud in the sky, like a number of knights

  Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn.

  And always likely! — Oh, if I could ride

  With my head held high-serene against the sky

  Do you think I’d have a creature like you at my side

  With your gloom and your doubt that you love me? O darling rye,

  How I adore you for your simple pride!

  And those bright fireflies wafting in between

  And over the swaying cornstalks, just above

  All their dark-feathered helmets, like little green

  Stars come low and wandering here for love

  Of this dark earth, and wandering all serene — !

  How I adore you, you happy things, you dears

  Riding the air and carrying all the time

  Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers

  My heart to see you settling and trying to climb

  The cornstalks, tipping with fire their spears.

  All over the corn’s dim motion, against the blue

  Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm

  Of questing brilliant things: — you joy, y
ou true

  Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm

  My poor and perished soul at the joy of you!

  The Man answers and she mocks

  You’re a fool, woman. I love you and you know I do!

  — Lord, take his love away, it makes him whine.

  And I give you everything that you want me to.

  — Lord, dear Lord, do you think he ever can shine?

  A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND

  Ah, stern cold man,

  How can you lie so relentless hard

  While I wash you with weeping water!

  Ah, face, carved hard and cold,

  You have been like this, on your guard

  Against me, since death began.

  You masquerader!

  How can you shame to act this part

  Of unswerving indifference to me?

  It is not you; why disguise yourself

  Against me, to break my heart,

  You evader?

  You’ve a warm mouth,

  A good warm mouth always sooner to soften

  Even than your sudden eyes.

  Ah cruel, to keep your mouth

  Relentless, however often

  I kiss it in drouth.

  You are not he.

  Who are you, lying in his place on the bed

  And rigid and indifferent to me?

  His mouth, though he laughed or sulked

  Was always warm and red

  And good to me.

  And his eyes could see

  The white moon hang like a breast revealed

  By the slipping shawl of stars,

  Could see the small stars tremble