Chapter 1

LOOK! WE HAVE COME THROUGH!

by

D. H. LAWRENCE

Published by Chatto & Windus London MCMXVII

Some of these poems have appeared in the "English Review" and in "Poetry," also in the "Georgian Anthology" and the "Imagist Anthology"

FOREWORD

THESE poems should not be considered separately, as so many single pieces. They are intended as an essential story, or history, or confession, unfolding one from the other in organic development, the whole revealing the intrinsic experience of a man during the crisis of manhood, when he marries and comes into himself. The period covered is, roughly, the sixth lustre of a man's life

CONTENTS

MOONRISE ELEGY NONENTITY MARTYR A LA MODE DON JUAN THE SEA HYMN TO PRIAPUS BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN FIRST MORNING "AND OH-- THAT THE MAN I AM MIGHT CEASE TO BE--" SHE LOOKS BACK ON THE BALCONY FROHNLEICHNAM IN THE DARK MUTILATION HUMILIATION A YOUNG WIFE GREEN RIVER ROSES GLOIRE DE DIJON ROSES ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE I AM LIKE A ROSE ROSE OF ALL THE WORLD A YOUTH MOWING QUITE FORSAKEN FORSAKEN AND FORLORN FIREFLIES IN THE CORN A DOE AT EVENING SONG OF A MAN WHO IS NOT LOVED SINNERS MISERY SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN ITALY WINTER DAWN A BAD BEGINNING WHY DOES SHE WEEP? GIORNO DEI MORTI ALL SOULS LADY WIFE BOTH SIDES OF THE MEDAL LOGGERHEADS DECEMBER NIGHT NEW YEAR'S EVE NEW YEAR'S NIGHT VALENTINE'S NIGHT BIRTH NIGHT RABBIT SNARED IN THE NIGHT PARADISE RE-ENTERED SPRING MORNING WEDLOCK HISTORY SONG OF A MAN WHO HAS COME THROUGH ONE WOMAN TO ALL WOMEN PEOPLE STREET LAMPS "SHE SAID AS WELL TO ME" NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH ELYSIUM MANIFESTO AUTUMN RAIN FROST FLOWERS CRAVING FOR SPRING

ARGUMENT

_After much struggling and loss in love and in the world of man, the protagonist throws in his lot with a woman who is already married. Together they go into another country, she perforce leaving her children behind. The conflict of love and hate goes on between the man and the woman, and between these two and the world around them, till it reaches some sort of conclusion, they transcend into some condition of blessedness_

_MOONRISE_

AND who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us Spread out and known at last, and we are sure That beauty is a thing beyond the grave, That perfect, bright experience never falls To nothingness, and time will dim the moon Sooner than our full consummation here In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.

_ELEGY_

THE sun immense and rosy Must have sunk and become extinct The night you closed your eyes for ever against me.

Grey days, and wan, dree dawnings Since then, with fritter of flowers-- Day wearies me with its ostentation and fawnings.

Still, you left me the nights, The great dark glittery window, The bubble hemming this empty existence with lights.

Still in the vast hollow Like a breath in a bubble spinning Brushing the stars, goes my soul, that skims the bounds like a swallow!

I can look through The film of the bubble night, to where you are. Through the film I can almost touch you.

EASTWOOD

_NONENTITY_

THE stars that open and shut Fall on my shallow breast Like stars on a pool.

The soft wind, blowing cool Laps little crest after crest Of ripples across my breast.

And dark grass under my feet Seems to dabble in me Like grass in a brook.

Oh, and it is sweet To be all these things, not to be Any more myself.

For look, I am weary of myself!

_MARTYR À LA MODE_

AH God, life, law, so many names you keep, You great, you patient Effort, and you Sleep That does inform this various dream of living, You sleep stretched out for ever, ever giving Us out as dreams, you august Sleep Coursed round by rhythmic movement of all time,

The constellations, your great heart, the sun Fierily pulsing, unable to refrain; Since you, vast, outstretched, wordless Sleep Permit of no beyond, ah you, whose dreams We are, and body of sleep, let it never be said I quailed at my appointed function, turned poltroon

For when at night, from out the full surcharge Of a day's experience, sleep does slowly draw The harvest, the spent action to itself; Leaves me unburdened to begin again; At night, I say, when I am gone in sleep, Does my slow heart rebel, do my dead hands Complain of what the day has had them do?

Never let it be said I was poltroon At this my task of living, this my dream, This me which rises from the dark of sleep In white flesh robed to drape another dream, As lightning comes all white and trembling From out the cloud of sleep, looks round about One moment, sees, and swift its dream is over, In one rich drip it sinks to another sleep, And sleep thereby is one more dream enrichened.

If so the Vast, the God, the Sleep that still grows richer Have said that I, this mote in the body of sleep Must in my transiency pass all through pain, Must be a dream of grief, must like a crude Dull meteorite flash only into light When tearing through the anguish of this life, Still in full flight extinct, shall I then turn Poltroon, and beg the silent, outspread God To alter my one speck of doom, when round me burns The whole great conflagration of all life, Lapped like a body close upon a sleep, Hiding and covering in the eternal Sleep Within the immense and toilsome life-time, heaved With ache of dreams that body forth the Sleep?

Shall I, less than the least red grain of flesh Within my body, cry out to the dreaming soul That slowly labours in a vast travail, To halt the heart, divert the streaming flow That carries moons along, and spare the stress That crushes me to an unseen atom of fire?

When pain and all And grief are but the same last wonder, Sleep Rising to dream in me a small keen dream Of sudden anguish, sudden over and spent--

CROYDON

_DON JUAN_

IT is Isis the mystery Must be in love with me.

Here this round ball of earth Where all the mountains sit Solemn in groups, And the bright rivers flit Round them for girth.

Here the trees and troops Darken the shining grass, And many people pass Plundered from heaven, Many bright people pass, Plunder from heaven.

What of the mistresses What the beloved seven? --They were but witnesses, I was just driven.

Where is there peace for me? Isis the mystery Must be in love with me.

_THE SEA_

You, you are all unloving, loveless, you; Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods, You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even, Threshing your own passions with no woman for the threshing-floor, Finishing your dreams for your own sake only, Playing your great game around the world, alone, Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to cherish, No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter.

Not like the earth, the spouse all full of increase Moiled over with the rearing of her many-mouthed young; You are single, you are fruitless, phosphorescent, cold and callous, Naked of worship, of love or of adornment, Scorning the panacea even of labour, Sworn to a high and splendid purposelessness Of brooding and delighting in the secret of life's goings, Sea, only you are free, sophisticated.

You who toil not, you who spin not, Surely but for you and your like, toiling Were not worth while, nor spinning worth the effort!

You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out; You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm, So that they seem to utter themselves aloud; You who steep from out the days their colour, Reveal the universal tint that dyes Their web; who shadow the sun's great gestures and expressions So that he seems a stranger in his passing; Who voice the dumb night fittingly; Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to death with your shadowing.

BOURNEMOUTH

_HYMN TO PRIAPUS_

MY love lies underground With her face upturned to mine, And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss That ended her life and mine.

I dance at the Christmas party Under the mistletoe Along with a ripe, slack country lass Jostling to and fro.

The big, soft country lass, Like a loose sheaf of wheat Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor At my feet.

The warm, soft country lass, Sweet as an armful of wheat At threshing-time broken, was broken For me, and ah, it was sweet!

Now I am going home Fulfilled and alone, I see the great Orion standing Looking down.

He's the star of my first beloved Love-making. The witness of all that bitter-sweet Heart-aching.

Now he sees this as well, This last commission. Nor do I get any look Of admonition.

He can add the reckoning up I suppose, between now and then, Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult Ways of men.

He has done as I have done No doubt: Remembered and forgotten Turn and about.

My love lies underground With her face upturned to mine, And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss That ended her life and mine.

She fares in the stark immortal Fields of death; I in these goodly, frozen Fields beneath.

Something in me remembers And will not forget. The stream of my life in the darkness Deathward set!

And something in me has forgotten, Has ceased to care. Desire comes up, and contentment Is debonair.

I, who am worn and careful, How much do I care? How is it I grin then, and chuckle Over despair?

Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient Grief makes us free To be faithless and faithful together As we have to be.

_BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN_

FIRST PART

UPON her plodding palfrey With a heavy child at her breast And Joseph holding the bridle They mount to the last hill-crest.

Dissatisfied and weary She sees the blade of the sea Dividing earth and heaven In a glitter of ecstasy.

Sudden a dark-faced stranger With his back to the sun, holds out His arms; so she lights from her palfrey And turns her round about.

She has given the child to Joseph, Gone down to the flashing shore; And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand, Stands watching evermore.

SECOND PART

THE sea in the stones is singing, A woman binds her hair With yellow, frail sea-poppies, That shine as her fingers stir.

While a naked man comes swiftly Like a spurt of white foam rent From the crest of a falling breaker, Over the poppies sent.

He puts his surf-wet fingers Over her startled eyes, And asks if she sees the land, the land, The land of her glad surmise.

THIRD PART

AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle Riding at Joseph's side, She says, "I went to Cythera, And woe betide!"

Her heart is a swinging cradle That holds the perfect child, But the shade on her forehead ill becomes A mother mild.

So on with the slow, mean journey In the pride of humility; Till they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land Over a sullen sea.

While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent She goes far down to the shore To where a man in a heaving boat Waits with a lifted oar.

FOURTH PART

THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave And looked far down the dark Where an archway torn and glittering Shone like a huge sea-spark.

He said: "Do you see the spirits Crowding the bright doorway?" He said: "Do you hear them whispering?" He said: "Do you catch what they say?"

FIFTH PART

THEN Joseph, grey with waiting, His dark eyes full of pain, Heard: "I have been to Patmos; Give me the child again."

Now on with the hopeless journey Looking bleak ahead she rode, And the man and the child of no more account Than the earth the palfrey trode.

Till a beggar spoke to Joseph, But looked into her eyes; So she turned, and said to her husband: "I give, whoever denies."

SIXTH PART

SHE gave on the open heather Beneath bare judgment stars, And she dreamed of her children and Joseph, And the isles, and her men, and her scars.

And she woke to distil the berries The beggar had gathered at night, Whence he drew the curious liquors He held in delight.

He gave her no crown of flowers, No child and no palfrey slow, Only led her through harsh, hard places Where strange winds blow.

She follows his restless wanderings Till night when, by the fire's red stain, Her face is bent in the bitter steam That comes from the flowers of pain.

Then merciless and ruthless He takes the flame-wild drops To the town, and tries to sell them With the market-crops.

So she follows the cruel journey That ends not anywhere, And dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot, She is brewing hope from despair.

TRIER

_FIRST MORNING_

THE night was a failure but why not--?

In the darkness with the pale dawn seething at the window through the black frame I could not be free, not free myself from the past, those others-- and our love was a confusion, there was a horror, you recoiled away from me.

Now, in the morning As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine, And look at the mountain-walls, Walls of blue shadow, And see so near at our feet in the meadow Myriads of dandelion pappus Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass Held still beneath the sunshine--

It is enough, you are near-- The mountains are balanced, The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the grass; You and I together We hold them proud and blithe On our love. They stand upright on our love, Everything starts from us, We are the source.

BEUERBERG

_"AND OH-- THAT THE MAN I AM MIGHT CEASE TO BE--"_

No, now I wish the sunshine would stop, and the white shining houses, and the gay red flowers on the balconies and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out between two valves of darkness; the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with muffled sound obliterating everything.

I wish that whatever props up the walls of light would fall, and darkness would come hurling heavily down, and it would be thick black dark for ever. Not sleep, which is grey with dreams, nor death, which quivers with birth, but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.

What is sleep? It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill, but it does not alter me, nor help me. And death would ache still, I am sure; it would be lambent, uneasy. I wish it would be completely dark everywhere, inside me, and out, heavily dark utterly.

WOLFRATSHAUSEN

_SHE LOOKS BACK_

THE pale bubbles The lovely pale-gold bubbles of the globe-flowers In a great swarm clotted and single Went rolling in the dusk towards the river To where the sunset hung its wan gold cloths; And you stood alone, watching them go, And that mother-love like a demon drew you from me Towards England.

Along the road, after nightfall, Along the glamorous birch-tree avenue Across the river levels We went in silence, and you staring to England.

So then there shone within the jungle darkness Of the long, lush under-grass, a glow-worm's sudden Green lantern of pure light, a little, intense, fusing triumph, White and haloed with fire-mist, down in the tangled darkness.

Then you put your hand in mine again, kissed me, and we struggled to be together. And the little electric flashes went with us, in the grass, Tiny lighthouses, little souls of lanterns, courage burst into an explosion of green light Everywhere down in the grass, where darkness was ravelled in darkness.

Still, the kiss was a touch of bitterness on my mouth Like salt, burning in. And my hand withered in your hand. For you were straining with a wild heart, back, back again, Back to those children you had left behind, to all the æons of the past. And I was here in the under-dusk of the Isar.

At home, we leaned in the bedroom window Of the old Bavarian Gasthaus, And the frogs in the pool beyond thrilled with exuberance, Like a boiling pot the pond crackled with happiness, Like a rattle a child spins round for joy, the night rattled With the extravagance of the frogs, And you leaned your cheek on mine, And I suffered it, wanting to sympathise.

At last, as you stood, your white gown falling from your breasts, You looked into my eyes, and said: "But this is joy!" I acquiesced again. But the shadow of lying was in your eyes, The mother in you, fierce as a murderess, glaring to England, Yearning towards England, towards your young children, Insisting upon your motherhood, devastating.

Still, the joy was there also, you spoke truly, The joy was not to be driven off so easily; Stronger than fear or destructive mother-love, it stood flickering; The frogs helped also, whirring away. Yet how I have learned to know that look in your eyes Of horrid sorrow! How I know that glitter of salt, dry, sterile, sharp, corrosive salt! Not tears, but white sharp brine Making hideous your eyes.

I have seen it, felt it in my mouth, my throat, my chest, my belly, Burning of powerful salt, burning, eating through my defenceless nakedness. I have been thrust into white, sharp crystals, Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated.

Ah, Lot's Wife, Lot's Wife! The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column of salt, like a waterspout That has enveloped me! Snow of salt, white, burning, eating salt In which I have writhed.

Lot's Wife!--Not Wife, but Mother. I have learned to curse your motherhood, You pillar of salt accursed. I have cursed motherhood because of you, Accursed, base motherhood!

I long for the time to come, when the curse against you will have gone out of my heart. But it has not gone yet. Nevertheless, once, the frogs, the globe-flowers of Bavaria, the glow-worms Gave me sweet lymph against the salt-burns, There is a kindness in the very rain.

Therefore, even in the hour of my deepest, pas- sionate malediction I try to remember it is also well between us. That you are with me in the end. That you never look quite back; nine-tenths, ah, more You look round over your shoulder; But never quite back.

Nevertheless the curse against you is still in my heart Like a deep, deep burn. The curse against all mothers. All mothers who fortify themselves in motherhood, devastating the vision. They are accursed, and the curse is not taken off It burns within me like a deep, old burn, And oh, I wish it was better.

BEUERBERG

_ON THE BALCONY_

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 heavens dither And disappear--what have we but each other? The boat has gone.

ICKING

_FROHNLEICHNAM_

You have come your way, I have come my way; You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all; I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.

But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding We have come our ways and met at last Here in this upper room.

Here the balcony Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly Go by with their loads of green and silver birch- trees For the feast of Corpus Christi.

Here from the balcony We look over the growing wheat, where the jade- green river Goes between the pine-woods, Over and beyond to where the many mountains Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.

I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch. You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch Day and make magic in heaven.

At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white; At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.

Shameless and callous I love you; Out of indifference I love you; Out of mockery we dance together, Out of the sunshine into the shadow, Passing across the shadow into the sunlight, Out of sunlight to shadow.

As we dance Your eyes take all of me in as a communication; As we dance I see you, ah, in full! Only to dance together in triumph of being together Two white ones, sharp, vindicated, Shining and touching, Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.

_IN THE DARK_

A BLOTCH of pallor stirs beneath the high Square picture-dusk, the window of dark sky.

A sound subdued in the darkness: tears! As if a bird in difficulty up the valley steers.

"Why have you gone to the window? Why don't you sleep? How you have wakened me! But why, why do you weep?"

_"I am afraid of you, I am afraid, afraid! There is something in you destroys me--!"_

"You have dreamed and are not awake, come here to me." _"No, I have wakened. It is you, you are cruel to me!"_

"My dear!"--_"Yes, yes, you are cruel to me. You cast A shadow over my breasts that will kill me at last."_

"Come!"--_"No, I'm a thing of life. I give You armfuls of sunshine, and you won't let me live."_

"Nay, I'm too sleepy!"--_"Ah, you are horrible; You stand before me like ghosts, like a darkness upright."_

"I!"--_"How can you treat me so, and love me? My feet have no hold, you take the sky from above me."_

"My dear, the night is soft and eternal, no doubt You love it!"--_"It is dark, it kills me, I am put out."_

"My dear, when you cross the street in the sun- shine, surely Your own small night goes with you. Why treat it so poorly?"

_"No, no, I dance in the sun, I'm a thing of life--"_ "Even then it is dark behind you. Turn round, my wife."

_"No, how cruel you are, you people the sunshine With shadows!"_--"With yours I people the sunshine, yours and mine--"

"In the darkness we all are gone, we are gone with the trees And the restless river;--we are lost and gone with all these."

_"But I am myself, I have nothing to do with these."_ "Come back to bed, let us sleep on our mys- teries.

"Come to me here, and lay your body by mine, And I will be all the shadow, you the shine.

"Come, you are cold, the night has frightened you. Hark at the river! It pants as it hurries through

"The pine-woods. How I love them so, in their mystery of not-to-be." _"--But let me be myself, not a river or a tree."_

"Kiss me! How cold you are!--Your little breasts Are bubbles of ice. Kiss me!--You know how it rests

"One to be quenched, to be given up, to be gone in the dark; To be blown out, to let night dowse the spark.

"But never mind, my love. Nothing matters, save sleep; Save you, and me, and sleep; all the rest will keep."

MUTILATION

A THICK mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat. I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up. Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.

I hold the night in horror; I dare not turn round.

To-night I have left her alone. They would have it I have left her for ever.

Oh my God, how it aches Where she is cut off from me!

Perhaps she will go back to England. Perhaps she will go back, Perhaps we are parted for ever.

If I go on walking through the whole breadth of Germany I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.

Over there is Russia--Austria, Switzerland, France, in a circle! I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.

It aches in me. What is England or France, far off, But a name she might take? I don't mind this continent stretching, the sea far away; It aches in me for her Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching; Not even longing, It is only agony.

A cripple! Oh God, to be mutilated! To be a cripple!

And if I never see her again?