Suburbs On A Hazy Day

O Stiffly shapen houses that change not,
    What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you, and raised
To show you thus transfigured, changed,
    Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?

Such resolute shapes, so harshly set
    In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped
In void and null profusion, how is this?
    In what strong aqua regia now are you steeped?

That you lose the brick-stuff out of you
    And hover like a presentment, fading faint
And vanquished, evaporate away
    To leave but only the merest possible taint!

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

Lady Wife

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Town

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Irony

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, Simple Poetry

Two-Fold

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.

Flat Suburbs, S.W., In The Morning

The new red houses spring like plants
    In level rows
Of reddish herbage that bristles and slants
    Its square shadows.

The pink young houses show one side bright
    Flatly assuming the sun,
And one side shadow, half in sight,
    Half-hiding the pavement-run;

Where hastening creatures pass intent
    On their level way,
Threading like ants that can never relent
    And have nothing to say.

Bare stems of street-lamps stiffly stand
    At random, desolate twigs,
To testify to a blight on the land
    That has stripped their sprigs.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Parliament Hill In The Evening

The houses fade in a melt of mist
    Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
    The Night's slow care.

The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,
    The city corrodes out of sight
As the body corrodes when death invades
    That citadel of delight.

Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread
    Through the shroud of the town, as slow
Night-lights hither and thither shed
    Their ghastly glow.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Ruination

The sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist
That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding back.
Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea
Some street-ends thrust forward their stack.

On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey
Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall
As if moving in air towards us, tall angels
Of darkness advancing steadily over us all.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

From A College Window

The glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping,
    Goes trembling past me up the College wall.
Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping,
    The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall.

Beyond the leaves that overhang the street,
    Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white,
Passes the world with shadows at their feet
    Going left and right.

Remote, although I hear the beggar's cough,
    See the woman's twinkling fingers tend him a coin,
I sit absolved, assured I am better off
    Beyond a world I never want to join.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

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
Of my presence th...

David Herbert Richards Lawrence

Grey Evening

When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields.

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,
As farther off the scythe of night is swung,
And little stars come rolling from their husk.

And all the earth is gone into a dust
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,
Covered with aged lichens, pale with must,
And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

And so I sit and scan the book of grey,

David Herbert Richards Lawrence