Shades

Shall I tell you, then, how it is? -
There came a cloven gleam
Like a tongue of darkened flame
To flicker in me.

And so I seem
To have you still the same
In one world with me.

In the flicker of a flower,
In a worm that is blind, yet strives,
In a mouse that pauses to listen

Glimmers our
Shadow; yet it deprives
Them none of their glisten.

In every shaken morsel
I see our shadow tremble
As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand.

As if it were part and parcel,
One shadow, and we need not dissemble
Our darkness: do you understand?

For I have told you plainly how it is.

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

Tortoise Shout

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

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David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

New Year's Eve

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!
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."

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Next Morning
How have I wandered here to this vaulted room
In the house of life? - the floor was ruffled with gold
Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,
Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight unfold

For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom
Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,
And damp old web of misery's heirloom
Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold.

And what is this that floats on the undermist
Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling
Unsightly its way to the warmth? - this thing with a list
To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?

Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it missed
Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing
Upon me! - my own reflection! - explicit gist
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Everlasting Flowers
Who do you think stands watching
The snow-tops shining rosy
In heaven, now that the darkness
Takes all but the tallest posy?

Who then sees the two-winged
Boat down there, all alone
And asleep on the snow's last shadow,
Like a moth on a stone?

The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,
Have all gone dark, gone black.
And now in the dark my soul to you
Turns back.

To you, my little darling,
To you, out of Italy.
For what is loveliness, my love,
Save you have it with me!

So, there's an oxen wagon
Comes darkly into sight:
A man with a lantern, swinging
A little light.

What does he see, my darling
Here by the darkened lake?
Here, in the sloping shadow
The mou...
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Shadow and Light
Cease, empty Faith, the Spectrum saith,
I was, and lo, have been;
I, God, am nought: a shade of thought,
Which, but by darkness seen,
Upon the unknown yourselves have thrown,
Placed it and light between.

At mornings birth on darkened earth,
And as the evening sinks,
Awfully vast abroad is cast
The lengthened form that shrinks
And shuns the sight in midday light,
And underneath you slinks.

From barren strands of wintry lands
Across the seas of time,
Borne onward fast ye touch at last
An equatorial clime;

In equatorial noon sublime
At zenith stands the sun,
And lo, around, far, near, are found
Yourselves, and Shadow none.

A moment! yea! but when the day
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Scent Of Irises
A Faint, sickening scent of irises
Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table
A fine proud spike of purple irises
Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable
To see the class's lifted and bended faces
Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.

I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless
Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast you
With fire on your cheeks and your brow and your chin as you dipped
Your face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrast you,
Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks,
Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should not outlast.

You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation,
You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above,
Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,
David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Blue
The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.

I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting
The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.

Feeling myself undawning, the day's light playing upon me,
I who am substance of shadow, I all compact
Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly
Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.

I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;
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