Bombardment

The town has opened to the sun.
Like a flat red lily with a million petals
She unfolds, she comes undone.

A sharp sky brushes upon
The myriad glittering chimney-tips
As she gently exhales to the sun.

Hurrying creatures run
Down the labyrinth of the sinister flower.
What is it they shun?

A dark bird falls from the sun.
It curves in a rush to the heart of the vast
Flower: the day has begun.

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

Frost Flowers

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Silence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Elegy

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

She Looks Back

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Last Hours

The cool of an oak's unchequered shade
Falls on me as I lie in deep grass
Which rushes upward, blade beyond blade,
While higher the darting grass-flowers pass
Piercing the blue with their crocketed spires
And waving flags, and the ragged fires
Of the sorrel's cresset - a green, brave town
Vegetable, new in renown.

Over the tree's edge, as over a mountain
Surges the white of the moon,
A cloud comes up like the surge of a fountain,
Pressing round and low at first, but soon
Heaving and piling a round white dome.
How lovely it is to be at home
Like an insect in the grass
Letting life pass.

There's a scent of clover crept through my hair
From the full resource of some purple dome
Where that lumbering bee, who can hardly bear
His burden ab...

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

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.

Over the blue of the waters ply
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;
And, look you, floating just thereby,
The blue-gleamed drake stems proud
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.

In the lustrous gleam of the water, there
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,
Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share
The darkness that interweaves
The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.

Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts
Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see
A great bay stallion dances, skirts

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

A Bad Beginning

The yellow sun steps over the mountain-top
And falters a few short steps across the lake -
Are you awake?

See, glittering on the milk-blue, morning lake
They are laying the golden racing-track of the sun;
The day has begun.

The sun is in my eyes, I must get up.
I want to go, there's a gold road blazes before
My breast - which is so sore.

What? - your throat is bruised, bruised with my kisses?
Ah, but if I am cruel what then are you?
I am bruised right through.

What if I love you! - This misery
Of your dissatisfaction and misprision
Stupefies me.

Ah yes, your open arms! Ah yes, ah yes,
You would take me to your breast! - But no,
You should come to mine,
It were better so.

Here I am - get up and come to me!

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Firelight And Nightfall

The darkness steals the forms of all the queens,
But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red,
Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead
Hours that were once all glory and all queens.

And I remember all the sunny hours
Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,
And morning singing where the woods are scrolled
And diapered above the chaunting flowers.

Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And grey now night is here; nor will
Another torn red sunset come to pass.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Street Lamps

Gold, with an innermost speck
Of silver, singing afloat
    Beneath the night,
Like balls of thistle-down
Wandering up and down
Over the whispering town
    Seeking where to alight!

Slowly, above the street
Above the ebb of feet
    Drifting in flight;
Still, in the purple distance
The gold of their strange persistence
As they cross and part and meet
    And pass out of sight!

The seed-ball of the sun
Is broken at last, and done
    Is the orb of day.
Now to the separate ends
Seed after day-seed wends
    A separate way.

No sun will ever rise
Again on the wonted skies
    In the midst of the spheres.
The globe of the day, over-ripe,
Is shattered at last beneath the stripe
Of the wind, and its onene...

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Tommies In The Train

THE SUN SHINES,
The coltsfoot flowers along the railway banks
Shine like flat coin which Jove in thanks
Strews each side the lines.

A steeple
In purple elms, daffodils
Sparkle beneath; luminous hills
Beyond - and no people.

England, Oh Danaë
To this spring of cosmic gold
That falls on your lap of mould!
What then are we?

What are we
Clay-coloured, who roll in fatigue
As the train falls league by league
From our destiny?

A hand is over my face,
A cold hand. I peep between the fingers
To watch the world that lingers
Behind, yet keeps pace.

Always there, as I peep
Between the fingers that cover my face!
Which then is it that falls from its place
And rolls down the steep?

Is it the train

David Herbert Richards Lawrence