The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence. D. H. Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ other, when she knows the fearful other flesh, ah, dark- ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete, when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap like one outside the house, when she passes away as I have passed away being pressed up against the other, then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her, I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver, having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere, one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique, and she also, pure, isolated, complete, two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction. Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect. VIII AFTER that, there will only remain that all men detach themselves and become unique, that we are all detached, moving in freedom more than the angels, conditioned only by our own pure single being, having no laws but the laws of our own being. Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled. Every movement will be direct. Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces when we think of it lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend. Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassing singleness of mankind. The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un- dimmed, the hen will nestle over her chickens, we shall love, we shall hate, but it will be like music, sheer utterance, issuing straight out of the unknown, the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us unbidden, unchecked, like ambassadors. We shall not look before and after. We shall be, now. We shall know in full. We, the mystic NOW. ZENNOR

      Autumn Rain

       Table of Contents

      THE plane leaves

       fall black and wet

       on the lawn;

       The cloud sheaves

       in heaven's fields set

       droop and are drawn

       in falling seeds of rain;

       the seed of heaven

       on my face

       falling—I hear again

       like echoes even

       that softly pace

       Heaven's muffled floor,

       the winds that tread

       out all the grain

       of tears, the store

       harvested

       in the sheaves of pain

       caught up aloft:

       the sheaves of dead

       men that are slain

       now winnowed soft

       on the floor of heaven;

       manna invisible

       of all the pain

       here to us given;

       finely divisible

       falling as rain.

      Frost Flowers

       Table of Contents

      IT is not long since, here among all these folk

       in London, I should have held myself

       of no account whatever,

       but should have stood aside and made them way

       thinking that they, perhaps,

       had more right than I—for who was I?

       Now I see them just the same, and watch them.

       But of what account do I hold them?

       Especially the young women. I look at them

       as they dart and flash

       before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a

       pool.

       If I pass them close, or any man,

       like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside

       pretending to avoid us; yet all the time

       calculating.

       They think that we adore them—alas, would it

       were true!

       Probably they think all men adore them,

       howsoever they pass by.

       What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring,

       such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces,

       like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman

       hyacinths,

       scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim

       anemones,

       even the sulphur auriculas,

       flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel

       cold to the touch,

       flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost;

       what is it, that, from the faces of the fair young

       women

       comes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneath

       that startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?

       They are the issue of acrid winter, these first-

       flower young women;

       their scent is lacerating and repellant,

       it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache,

       of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption;

       it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption,

       when destruction soaks through the mortified,

       decomposing earth,

       and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosom

       of the ground.

       They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification,

       thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms,

       with a loveliness I loathe;

       for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching СКАЧАТЬ