New Year's Eve

There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.

This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.

Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!

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

Everlasting Flowers

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Frohnleichnam

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Winter-Lull

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Sigh No More

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.

December Night

Take off your cloak and your hat
And your shoes, and draw up at my hearth
Where never woman sat.

I have made the fire up bright;
Let us leave the rest in the dark
And sit by firelight.

The wine is warm in the hearth;
The flickers come and go.
I will warm your feet with kisses
Until they glow.

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

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!" - "A...

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Birth Night
This fireglow is a red womb
In the night, where you're folded up
On your doom.

And the ugly, brutal years
Are dissolving out of you,
And the stagnant tears.

I the great vein that leads
From the night to the source of you,
Which the sweet blood feeds.

New phase in the germ of you;
New sunny streams of blood
Washing you through.

You are born again of me.
I, Adam, from the veins of me
The Eve that is to be.

What has been long ago
Grows dimmer, we both forget,
We no longer know.

You are lovely, your face is soft
Like a flower in bud
On a mountain croft.

This is Noël for me.
To-night is a woman born
Of the man in me.
David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Winter Dawn
Green star Sirius
Dribbling over the lake;
The stars have gone so far on their road,
Yet we're awake!

Without a sound
The new young year comes in
And is half-way over the lake.
We must begin

Again. This love so full
Of hate has hurt us so,
We lie side by side
Moored - but no,

Let me get up
And wash quite clean
Of this hate. -
So green

The great star goes!
I am washed quite clean,
Quite clean of it all.
But e'en

So cold, so cold and clean
Now the hate is gone!
It is all no good,
I am chilled to the bone

Now the hate is gone;
There is nothing left;
I am pure like bone,
Of all feeling bereft.
David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Dissolute
Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.

And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life,
What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,
Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,
A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.
David Herbert Richards Lawrence