A Spiritual Woman

Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;
They have taught you to see
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,
A cunning algebra in the faces of men,
And God like geometry
Completing his circles, and working cleverly.

I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;
If I can - if any one could.
Then perhaps in the dark you'll have got what you want to find.
You've discovered so many bits, with your clever eyes,
And I'm a kaleidoscope
That you shake and shake, and yet it won't come to your mind.
Now stop carping at me. - But God, how I hate you!
Do you fear I shall swindle you?
Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will abate you
Somehow? - so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so cautious, you
Must have me all in your will and your consciousness -
I hate you.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer, poet, and essayist best known for his novels 'Sons and Lovers,' 'The Rainbow,' 'Women in Love,' and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover.' His works explore themes of emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions and artistic works earned him many enemies and he was frequently censored. Today, he is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Narcissus

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Spring Morning

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Tease

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Tortoise Shout

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

English

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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!
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"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
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David Herbert Richards Lawrence

One Woman To All Women
I don't care whether I am beautiful to you
You other women.
Nothing of me that you see is my own;
A man balances, bone unto bone
Balances, everything thrown
In the scale, you other women.

You may look and say to yourselves, I do
Not show like the rest.
My face may not please you, nor my stature; yet if you knew
How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings true
Like a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke
falls due,
You other women:

You would draw your mirror towards you, you would wish
To be different.
There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and him
Balanced in glorious equilibrium,
The swinging beauty of equilibrium,
You other women.

There's this other beauty, the way...
David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Lady Wife
Ah yes, I know you well, a sojourner
At the hearth;
I know right well the marriage ring you wear,
And what it's worth.

The angels came to Abraham, and they stayed
In his house awhile;
So you to mine, I imagine; yes, happily
Condescend to be vile.

I see you all the time, you bird-blithe, lovely
Angel in disguise.
I see right well how I ought to be grateful,
Smitten with reverent surprise.

Listen, I have no use
For so rare a visit;
Mine is a common devil's
Requisite.

Rise up and go, I have no use for you
And your blithe, glad mien.
No angels here, for me no goddesses,
Nor any Queen.

Put ashes on your head, put sackcloth on
And learn to serve.
You have fed me w...
David Herbert Richards Lawrence

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.

Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,
White lilac; shows discoloured night
Dripping with all the golden lees
Laburnum gives back to light

And shows the red of hawthorn set
On high to the purple heaven of night,
Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,
Blood shed in the noiseless fight.

Of life for love and love for life,
Of hunger for a little food,
Of kissing, lost for want of a wife
Long ago, long ago wooed.

Too far away you are, my love,
To st...
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She Said As Well To Me
She said as well to me: "Why are you ashamed?
That little bit of your chest that shows between
the gap of your shirt, why cover it up?
Why shouldn't your legs and your good strong thighs
be rough and hairy? - I'm glad they are like that.
You are shy, you silly, you silly shy thing.
Men are the shyest creatures, they never will come
out of their covers. Like any snake
slipping into its bed of dead leaves, you hurry into your clothes.
And I love you so! Straight and clean and all of a piece is the body of a man,
such an instrument, a spade, like a spear, or an oar,
such a joy to me - "
So she laid her hands and pressed them down my sides,
so that I began to wonder over myself, and what I was.

She said to me: "What an instrument, your body!
single and perfectly ...
David Herbert Richards Lawrence

A Young Wife
The pain of loving you
Is almost more than I can bear.

I walk in fear of you.
The darkness starts up where
You stand, and the night comes through
Your eyes when you look at me.

Ah never before did I see
The shadows that live in the sun!

Now every tall glad tree
Turns round its back to the sun
And looks down on the ground, to see
The shadow it used to shun.

At the foot of each glowing thing
A night lies looking up.

Oh, and I want to sing
And dance, but I can't lift up
My eyes from the shadows: dark
They lie spilt round the cup.

What is it? - Hark
The faint fine seethe in the air!

Like the seething sound in a shell!
It is death still seething where
The wild-flower shakes its bell
And th...
David Herbert Richards Lawrence