The Project Gutenberg eBook ofAmores: PoemsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Amores: PoemsAuthor: D. H. LawrenceRelease date: September 7, 2007 [eBook #22531]Most recently updated: April 19, 2019Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Lewis JonesHTML file produced by David Widger*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMORES: POEMS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Amores: PoemsAuthor: D. H. LawrenceRelease date: September 7, 2007 [eBook #22531]Most recently updated: April 19, 2019Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Lewis JonesHTML file produced by David Widger
Title: Amores: Poems
Author: D. H. Lawrence
Author: D. H. Lawrence
Release date: September 7, 2007 [eBook #22531]Most recently updated: April 19, 2019
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Lewis JonesHTML file produced by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMORES: POEMS ***
I WILL give you all my keys,You shall be my châtelaine,You shall enter as you please,As you please shall go again.When I hear you jingling throughAll the chambers of my soul,How I sit and laugh at youIn your vain housekeeping rôle.Jealous of the smallest cover,Angry at the simplest door;Well, you anxious, inquisitive lover,Are you pleased with what's in store?You have fingered all my treasures,Have you not, most curiously,Handled all my tools and measuresAnd masculine machinery?Over every single beautyYou have had your little rapture;You have slain, as was your duty,Every sin-mouse you could capture.Still you are not satisfied,Still you tremble faint reproach;Challenge me I keep asideSecrets that you may not broach.Maybe yes, and maybe no,Maybe therearesecret places,Altars barbarous below,Elsewhere halls of high disgraces.Maybe yes, and maybe no,You may have it as you please,Since I choose to keep you so,Suppliant on your curious knees.
CONTENTS
THE WILD COMMON
STUDY
DISCORD IN CHILDHOOD
VIRGIN YOUTH
MONOLOGUE OF A MOTHER
IN A BOAT
WEEK-NIGHT SERVICE
IRONY
DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT
DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT
A WINTER'S TALE
EPILOGUE
A BABY RUNNING BAREFOOT
DISCIPLINE
SCENT OF IRISES
THE PROPHET
LAST WORDS TO MIRIAM
MYSTERY
PATIENCE
BALLAD OF ANOTHER OPHELIA
RESTLESSNESS
A BABY ASLEEP AFTER PAIN
ANXIETY
THE PUNISHER
THE END
THE BRIDE
THE VIRGIN MOTHER
AT THE WINDOW
DRUNK
SORROW
DOLOR OF AUTUMN
THE INHERITANCE
SILENCE
LISTENING
BROODING GRIEF
LOTUS HURT BY THE COLD
MALADE
LIAISON
TROTH WITH THE DEAD
DISSOLUTE
SUBMERGENCE
THE ENKINDLED SPRING
REPROACH
THE HANDS OF THE BETROTHED
EXCURSION
PERFIDY
A SPIRITUAL WOMAN
MATING
A LOVE SONG
BROTHER AND SISTER
AFTER MANY DAYS
BLUE
SNAP-DRAGON
A PASSING BELL
IN TROUBLE AND SHAME
ELEGY
GREY EVENING
FIRELIGHT AND NIGHTFALL
THE MYSTIC BLUE
THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadnesstheir screamings proclaim.Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lieLow-rounded on the mournful grass they have bittendown to the quick.Are they asleep?—Are they alive?—Now see,when IMove my arms the hill bursts and heaves under theirspurting kick.The common flaunts bravely; but below, from therushesCrowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge theblossoming bushes;There the lazy streamlet pushesIts curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps,laughs, and gushes.Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brookebbing through so slow,Naked on the steep, soft lipOf the bank I stand watching my own white shadowquivering to and fro.What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing werelost?Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigoldsand the songs of the brook?If my veins and my breasts with love embossedWithered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowersthat the hot wind took.So my soul like a passionate woman turns,Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned,and her loveFor myself in my own eyes' laughter burns,Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down tomy belly from the breast-lights above.Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once,goes kissing me glad.And the soul of the wind and my blood compareTheir wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted inliberty, drifts on and is sad.Oh but the water loves me and folds me,Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me asthough it were living blood,Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremelygood.
SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbirdQuickens the unclasping hands of hazel,Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back,Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'llAll be sweet with white and blue violet.(Hush now, hush. Where am I?—Biuret—)On the green wood's edge a shy girl hoversFrom out of the hazel-screen on to the grass,Where wheeling and screaming the petulant ploversWave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas!Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool.(Work, work, you fool—!)Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceilingLights the soft hair of a girl as she reads,And the red firelight steadily wheelingWeaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep.And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealingFor the man to heed lest the girl shall weep.(Tears and dreams for them; for meBitter science—the exams. are near.I wish I bore it more patiently.I wish you did not wait, my dear,For me to come: since work I must:Though it's all the same when we are dead.—I wish I was only a bust,All head.)
OUTSIDE the house an ash-tree hung its terriblewhips,And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the treeShrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship'sWeird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slenderlashWhistling delirious rage, and the dreadful soundOf a thick lash booming and bruising, until itdrownedThe other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noiseof the ash.
Now and againAll my body springs alive,And the life that is polarised in my eyes,That quivers between my eyes and mouth,Flies like a wild thing across my body,Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous,Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,Gathering the soft ripples below my breastsInto urgent, passionate waves,And my soft, slumbering bellyQuivering awake with one impulse of desire,Gathers itself fiercely together;And my docile, fluent armsKnotting themselves with wild strengthTo clasp what they have never clasped.Then I tremble, and go tremblingUnder the wild, strange tyranny of my body,Till it has spent itself,And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,Back from my beautiful, lonely bodyTired and unsatisfied.
THIS is the last of all, this is the last!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 pastFusing to one dead mass in the sinking fireWhere the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, likeheavy moss.Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like alover,Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country,hauntingThe confines and gazing out on the land where thewind is free;White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hoverAlways on the distance, as if his soul were chauntingThe monotonous weird of departure away from me.Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozenseas,Like a bird from the far north blown with a brokenwingInto our sooty garden, he drags and beatsFrom place to place perpetually, seeking releaseFrom me, from the hand of my love which creeps up,needingHis happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.I must look away from him, for my faded eyesLike a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and asharp spark fliesIn my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,As he blenches and turns away, and my heart standsstill.This is the last, it will not be any more.All my life I have borne the burden of myself,All the long years of sitting in my husband's house,Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:"Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, OSelf,You are frightened with joy, my heart, like afrightened mouse."Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, sincelong agoThe angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expectedAnother would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,I must sit awhile and wait, and never knowThe loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takesme;For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.And the thought of the lipless voice of the Fathershakes meWith fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,And my heart rebels with anguish as night drawsnigher,
SEE the stars, love,In the water much clearer and brighterThan those above us, and whiter,Like nenuphars.Star-shadows shine, love,How many stars in your bowl?How many shadows in your soul,Only mine, love, mine?When I move the oars, love,See how the stars are tossed,Distorted, the brightest lost.—So that bright one of yours, love.The poor waters spillThe stars, waters broken, forsaken.—The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,Its stars stand still.There, did you seeThat spark fly up at us; evenStars are not safe in heaven.—What of yours, then, love, yours?What then, love, if soonYour light be tossed over a wave?Will you count the darkness a grave,And swoon, love, swoon?
THE five old bellsAre hurrying and eagerly calling,Imploring, protestingThey know, but clamorously fallingInto gabbling incoherence, never resting,Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocketdroppingIn splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.The silver moonThat somebody has spun so highTo settle the question, yes or no, has caughtIn the net of the night's balloon,And sits with a smooth bland smile up there inthe skySmiling at naught,Unless the winking star that keeps her companyMakes little jests at the bells' insanity,As ifheknew aught!The patient NightSits indifferent, hugged in her rags,She neither knows nor caresWhy the old church sobs and brags;The light distresses her eyes, and tearsHer old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers herface,Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells' loudclattering disgrace.The wise old treesDrop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,While a car at the end of the street goes by with alaugh;As by degreesThe poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,And the stars can chaffThe ironic moon at their ease, while the dim oldchurchIs peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts thatlurchIn its cenotaph.
ALWAYS, sweetheart,Carry into your room the blossoming boughs ofcherry,Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, thatverySoon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radianceof springFresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-dayswaitingIn a little throng at your door, and admit the onewho is plaitingHer hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her,then bid her depart.A come and go of March-day lovesThrough the flower-vine, trailing screen;A fluttering in of doves.Then a launch abroad of shrinking dovesOver the waste where no hope is seenOf open hands:Dance in and outSmall-bosomed girls of the spring of love,With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shoutOf mirth; then the dripping of tears on yourglove.
I HAVE opened the window to warm my hands on thesillWhere the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoonIs full of dreams, my love, the boys are all stillIn a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,Like savage music striking far off, and thereOn the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir andshineWhere the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder andwistfulness and strangeRecognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, asI greet the cloudOf blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinitedreams that rangeAt the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamingsof past lives crowd.Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through themellow veilOf the afternoon glows to me the old romance ofDavid and Dora,With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughterthat shakes the sailOf the ship of the soul over seas where dreameddreams lure the unoceaned explorer.All the bygone, hushèd yearsStreaming back where the mist distilsInto forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fearsNo longer shake, where the silk sail fillsWith an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, wherethe stormOf living has passed, on and onThrough the coloured iridescence that swims in thewarmWake of the tumult now spent and gone,Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing afterThe mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.
MY world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapesOf old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;An endless tapestry the past has woven drapesThe halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.The surface of dreams is broken,The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway,and I am wokenFrom the dreams that the distance flattered.Along the railway, active figures of men.They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as theymoveOut of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamyworld.Here in the subtle, rounded fleshBeats the active ecstasy.In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,The fascination of the quick, restless Creator movingthrough the meshOf men, vibrating in ecstasy through the roundedflesh.Oh my boys, bending over your books,In you is trembling and fusingThe creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of ageneration:And I watch to see the Creator, the power thatpatterns the dream.The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned,and sure,But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern,shaping and shapen?Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreamsreflected on the molten metal of dreams,Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves themall 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 mobilefeatures.Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseenShaper,The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat,light, all in one,Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling andshaping the dream in the flesh,As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that Iam life!Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouringconcentrationSwelling mankind like one bud to bring forth thefruit of a dream,Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of thesweep of the impulse of life,And watching the great Thing labouring through thewhole round flesh of the world;And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of thecoming 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!
YESTERDAY the fields were only grey with scatteredsnow,And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and goOn towards the pines at the hills' white verge.I cannot see her, since the mist's white scarfObscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;But she's waiting, I know, impatient and cold, halfSobs struggling into her frosty sigh.Why does she come so promptly, when she mustknowThat she's only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow—Why does she come, when she knows what I have totell?
PATIENCE, little Heart.One day a heavy, June-hot womanWill enter and shut the door to stay.And when your stifling heart would summonCool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep thenight at bay,Sitting in your room like two tiger-liliesFlaming on after sunset,Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow oftheir hot twilight;There in the morning, still, while the fierce strangescent comes yetStronger, hot and red; till you thirst for thedaffodilliesWith an anguished, husky thirst that you cannotassuage,When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of thedog-days holds you in gage.Patience, little Heart.
WHEN the bare feet of the baby beat across the grassThe little white feet nod like white flowers in thewind,They poise and run like ripples lapping across thewater;And the sight of their white play among the grassIs like a little robin's song, winsome,Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of oneflowerFor a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.I long for the baby to wander hither to meLike a wind-shadow wandering over the water,So that she can stand on my kneeWith her little bare feet in my hands,Cool like syringa buds,Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.
IT is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees tothe pane,The thin sycamores in the playground are swingingwith flattened leaves;The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellowgloom that stainsThe class; over them all the dark net of my disciplineweaves.It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, Iendured too long.I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under theflower of my soulAnd the gentle leaves, and have felt where the rootsare strongFixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil'slittle control.And there is the dark, my darling, where the rootsare entangled and fightEach one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, Iknow that thereIn the night where we first have being, before we riseon the light,We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and wedo not spare.And in the original dark the roots cannot keep,cannot knowAny communion whatever, but they bind themselveson to the dark,And drawing the darkness together, crush from it atwilight, a slowBurning that breaks at last into leaves and a flower'sbright spark.I came to the boys with love, my dear, but theyturned on me;I came with gentleness, with my heart 'twixt myhands like a bowl,Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt ittriumphantlyAnd tried to break the vessel, and to violate mysoul.But what have I to do with the boys, deep down inmy soul, my love?I throw from out of the darkness my self like a flowerinto sight,Like a flower from out of the night-time, I lift myface, and thoseWho will may warm their hands at me, comfort thisnight.But whosoever would pluck apart my flowering shallburn their hands,So flowers are tender folk, and roots can only hide,Yet my flowerings of love are a fire, and the scarletbrandsOf my love are roses to look at, but flames to chide.But comfort me, my love, now the fires are low,Now I am broken to earth like a winter destroyed,and allMyself but a knowledge of roots, of roots in the darkthat throwA net on the undersoil, which lies passive beneaththeir thrall.But comfort me, for henceforth my love is yoursalone,To you alone will I offer the bowl, to you will I giveMy essence only, but love me, and I will atoneTo you for my general loving, atone as long as I live.
A FAINT, sickening scent of irisesPersists all morning. Here in a jar on the tableA fine proud spike of purple irisesRising above the class-room litter, makes me unableTo see the class's lifted and bended facesSave in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold andsable.I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathlessDazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcastyouWith fire on your cheeks and your brow and yourchin as you dippedYour face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrastyou,Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks,Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should notoutlast.You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation,You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above,Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love;You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent,You with your face all rich, like the sheen of adove.You are always asking, do I remember, rememberThe butter-cup bog-end where the flowers rose upAnd kindled you over deep with a cast of gold?You ask again, do the healing days close upThe open darkness which then drew us in,The dark which then drank up our brimming cup.You upon the dry, dead beech-leaves, in the fire ofnightBurnt like a sacrifice; you invisible;Only the fire of darkness, and the scent of you!—And yes, thank God, it still is possibleThe healing days shall close the darkness upWherein we fainted like a smoke or dew.Like vapour, dew, or poison. Now, thank God,The fire of night is gone, and your face is ashIndistinguishable on the grey, chill day;The night has burnt us out, at last the goodDark fire burns on untroubled, without clashOf you upon the dead leaves saying me Yea.
AH, my darling, when over the purple horizon shallloomThe shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide theirfaces,Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreantgroom,Wounding themselves against her, denying herfecund embraces.