D. H. Lawrence

“ I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light, And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb. I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore To draw his net through the surfs thin line, at the dawn before The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide. I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net, the four Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied. ”

“ Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams reflected on the molten metal of dreams, Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them all as a heart-beat moves the blood, Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working, Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile features. Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen Shaper, The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat, light, all in one, Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and shaping the dream in the flesh, As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom. Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I am life! ”

“ And there is the dark, my darling, where the roots are entangled and fight Each one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, I know that there In the night where we first have being, before we rise on the light, We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and we do not spare. And in the original dark the roots cannot keep, cannot know Any communion whatever, but they bind themselves on to the dark, And drawing the darkness together, crush from it a twilight, a slow Burning that breaks at last into leaves and a flower's bright spark. I came to the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me ”

“ I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire, I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross, Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss. Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a lover, Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free; White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting The monotonous weird of departure away from me. ”

“ For I am tired, my dear, and if I could lift my feet, My tenacious feet from off the dome of the earth To fall like a breath within the breathing wind Where you are lost, what rest, my love, what rest!
GREY EVENING WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours? My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue? Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped And garnered that the golden daylight yields. ”

“ The tears are dry, and the cheeks' young fruits are fresh With laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, since pain Beat through the flesh. The Angel of Judgment has departed again to the Nearness. Desolate I am as a church whose lights are put out. And night enters in drearness. The fire rose up in the bush and blazed apace, The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish; Then God left the place. Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go, my head Is heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously, My strength is shed. ”

“ One day a heavy, June-hot woman Will enter and shut the door to stay. And when your stifling heart would summon Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay, Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies Flaming on after sunset, Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of their hot twilight; There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage, When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage. ”

“ Dance in and out Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love, With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout Of mirth; then the dripping of tears on your glove.
DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT OLD I HAVE opened the window to warm my hands on the sill Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone. The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine, Like savage music striking far off, and there On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air. ”

“ 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. 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. ”

“ The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.
DRUNK Too far away, oh love, I know, To save me from this haunted road, Whose lofty roses break and blow On a night-sky bent with a load Of lights: each solitary rose, Each arc-lamp golden does expose Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows Night blenched with a thousand snows. ”

“ Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring concentration Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the fruit of a dream, Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the sweep of the impulse of life, And watching the great Thing labouring through the whole round flesh of the world; And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the coming dream, As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal, Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream, Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious, molten life! ”

“ DISCIPLINE IT is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane, The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves; The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves. It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long. I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil's little control. ”

“ The light distresses her eyes, and tears Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her face, Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells' loud clattering disgrace. The wise old trees Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt, While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh; As by degrees The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt, And the stars can chaff The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch In its cenotaph. ”

“ There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd. Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora, With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned explorer. ”

“ THE MYSTIC BLUE OUT of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping, Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping. Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel. And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops. And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes, The rainbow arching over in the skies, New sparks of wonder opening in surprise. ”

“ If my veins and my breasts with love embossed Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took. So my soul like a passionate woman turns, Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns, Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above. ”

“ 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, Which else were aslumber along with the whole Of the dark, swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me; For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil. And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire, And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher,
IN A BOAT SEE the stars, love, In the water much clearer and brighter Than those above us, and whiter, Like nenuphars. ”

“ LIAISON A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight, Star-spiders spinning their thread Hang high suspended, withouten respite Watching us overhead. Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths Curtain us in so dark That here we're safe from even the ermin-moth's Flitting remark. Here in this swarthy, secret tent, Where black boughs flap the ground, You shall draw the thorn from my discontent, Surgeon me sound. This rare, rich night! For in here Under the yew-tree tent The darkness is loveliest where I could sear You like frankincense into scent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The silver moon That somebody has spun so high To settle the question, yes or no, has caught In the net of the night's balloon, And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in the sky Smiling at naught, Unless the winking star that keeps her company Makes little jests at the bells' insanity, As if he knew aught! ”

“ All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously, Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see. ”

“ A BABY RUNNING BAREFOOT WHEN the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is the day But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths hanging Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly from them Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the floor of the cave! I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness. But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread wings Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream upwards And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible, So that the birds are like one wafted feather, Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread country. ”