Amores Read online

  The Project Gutenberg eBook, Amores, by D. H. Lawrence

  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

  almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

  re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

  with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

  Title: Amores

  Poems

  Author: D. H. Lawrence

  Release Date: September 7, 2007 [eBook #22531]

  Language: English

  Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

  ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMORES***

  E-text prepared by Lewis Jones

  D. H. Lawrence (1916) _Amores_

  AMORES

  Poems

  by

  D. H. LAWRENCE

  New York

  B. W. Huebsch

  1916

  Copyright, 1916, by

  D. H. Lawrence

  TO

  OTTOLINE MORRELL

  IN TRIBUTE

  TO HER NOBLE

  AND INDEPENDENT SYMPATHY

  AND HER GENEROUS UNDERSTANDING

  THESE POEMS

  ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

  CONTENTS

  Tease

  The Wild Common

  Study

  Discord in Childhood

  Virgin Youth

  Monologue of a Mother

  In a Boat

  Week-night Service

  Irony

  Dreams Old

  Dreams Nascent

  A Winter's Tale

  Epilogue

  A Baby Running Barefoot

  Discipline

  Scent of Irises

  The Prophet

  Last Words to Miriam

  Mystery

  Patience

  Ballad of Another Ophelia

  Restlessness

  A Baby Asleep After Pain

  Anxiety

  The Punisher

  The End

  The Bride

  The Virgin Mother

  At the Window

  Drunk

  Sorrow

  Dolor of Autumn

  The Inheritance

  Silence

  Listening

  Brooding Grief

  Lotus Hurt by the Cold

  Malade

  Liaison

  Troth with the Dead

  Dissolute

  Submergence

  The Enkindled Spring

  Reproach

  The Hands of the Betrothed

  Excursion

  Perfidy

  A Spiritual Woman

  Mating

  A Love Song

  Brother and Sister

  After Many Days

  Blue

  Snap-Dragon

  A Passing Bell

  In Trouble and Shame

  Elegy

  Grey Evening

  Firelight and Nightfall

  The Mystic Blue

  AMORES

  TEASE

  I WILL give you all my keys,

  You shall be my chatelaine,

  You shall enter as you please,

  As you please shall go again.

  When I hear you jingling through

  All the chambers of my soul,

  How I sit and laugh at you

  In your vain housekeeping role.

  Jealous of the smallest cover,

  Angry at the simplest door;

  Well, you anxious, inquisitive lover,

  Are you pleased with what's in store?

  You have fingered all my treasures,

  Have you not, most curiously,

  Handled all my tools and measures

  And masculine machinery?

  Over every single beauty

  You have had your little rapture;

  You have slain, as was your duty,

  Every sin-mouse you could capture.

  Still you are not satisfied,

  Still you tremble faint reproach;

  Challenge me I keep aside

  Secrets that you may not broach.

  Maybe yes, and maybe no,

  Maybe there _are_ secret places,

  Altars barbarous below,

  Elsewhere halls of high disgraces.

  Maybe yes, and maybe no,

  You may have it as you please,

  Since I choose to keep you so,

  Suppliant on your curious knees.

  THE WILD COMMON

  THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,

  Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;

  Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:

  They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness

  their screamings proclaim.

  Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie

  Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten

  down to the quick.

  Are they asleep?--Are they alive?--Now see,

  when I

  Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their

  spurting kick.

  The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the

  rushes

  Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the

  blossoming bushes;

  There the lazy streamlet pushes

  Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps,

  laughs, and gushes.

  Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,

  Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook

  ebbing through so slow,

  Naked on the steep, soft lip

  Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow

  quivering to and fro.

  What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were

  lost?

  Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds

  and the songs of the brook?

  If my veins and my breasts with love embossed

  Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers

  that the hot wind took.

  So my soul like a passionate woman turns,

  Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned,

  and her love

  For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns,

  Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to

  my belly from the breast-lights above.

  Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,

  Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once,

  goes kissing me glad.

  And the soul of the wind and my blood compare

  Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in

  liberty, drifts on and is sad.

  Oh but the water loves me and folds me,

  Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as

  though it were living blood,

  Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,

  Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely

  good.

  STUDY

  SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbird

  Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel,

  Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back,

  Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll

  All be sweet with white and blue violet.

  (_Hush now, hush. Where am I?--Biuret--_)

  On the green wood's edge a shy girl hovers

  From out of the hazel-screen on to the grass,

  Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers
<
br />   Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas!

  Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool.

  (_Work, work, you fool--!_)

  Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling

  Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads,

  And the red firelight steadily wheeling

  Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep.

  And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing

  For the man to heed lest the girl shall weep.

  (_Tears and dreams for them; for me

  Bitter science--the exams. are near.

  I wish I bore it more patiently.

  I wish you did not wait, my dear,

  For me to come: since work I must:

  Though it's all the same when we are dead.--

  I wish I was only a bust,

  All head._)

  DISCORD IN CHILDHOOD

  OUTSIDE the house an ash-tree hung its terrible

  whips,

  And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree

  Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's

  Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

  Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender

  lash

  Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound

  Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it

  drowned

  The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise

  of the ash.

  VIRGIN YOUTH

  Now and again

  All my body springs alive,

  And the life that is polarised in my eyes,

  That quivers between my eyes and mouth,

  Flies like a wild thing across my body,

  Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous,

  Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,

  Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts

  Into urgent, passionate waves,

  And my soft, slumbering belly

  Quivering awake with one impulse of desire,

  Gathers itself fiercely together;

  And my docile, fluent arms

  Knotting themselves with wild strength

  To clasp what they have never clasped.

  Then I tremble, and go trembling

  Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body,

  Till it has spent itself,

  And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,

  Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,

  Back from my beautiful, lonely body

  Tired and unsatisfied.

  MONOLOGUE OF A MOTHER

  THIS is the last of all, this is the last!

  I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,

  I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,

  Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past

  Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire

  Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like

  heavy moss.

  Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a

  lover,

  Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country,

  haunting

  The confines and gazing out on the land where the

  wind is free;

  White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover

  Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting

  The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

  Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen

  seas,

  Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken

  wing

  Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats

  From place to place perpetually, seeking release

  From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up,

  needing

  His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

  I must look away from him, for my faded eyes

  Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,

  Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,

  Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a

  sharp spark flies

  In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,

  As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands

  still.

  This is the last, it will not be any more.

  All my life I have borne the burden of myself,

  All the long years of sitting in my husband's house,

  Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:

  "Now I am caught!--You are hopelessly lost, O

  Self,

  You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a

  frightened mouse."

  Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.

  It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!

  Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since

  long ago

  The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected

  Another would take me,--and now, my son, O my son,

  I must sit awhile and wait, and never know

  The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

  Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes

  me;

  For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.

  And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father

  shakes me

  With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,

  And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws

  nigher,

  IN A BOAT

  SEE the stars, love,

  In the water much clearer and brighter

  Than those above us, and whiter,

  Like nenuphars.

  Star-shadows shine, love,

  How many stars in your bowl?

  How many shadows in your soul,

  Only mine, love, mine?

  When I move the oars, love,

  See how the stars are tossed,

  Distorted, the brightest lost.

  --So that bright one of yours, love.

  The poor waters spill

  The stars, waters broken, forsaken.

  --The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,

  Its stars stand still.

  There, did you see

  That spark fly up at us; even

  Stars are not safe in heaven.

  --What of yours, then, love, yours?

  What then, love, if soon

  Your light be tossed over a wave?

  Will you count the darkness a grave,

  And swoon, love, swoon?

  WEEK-NIGHT SERVICE

  THE five old bells

  Are hurrying and eagerly calling,

  Imploring, protesting

  They know, but clamorously falling

  Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,

  Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket

  dropping

  In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

  The silver moon

  That somebody has spun so high

  To settle the question, yes or no, has caught

  In the net of the night's balloon,

  And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in

  the sky

  Smiling at naught,

  Unless the winking star that keeps her company

  Makes little jests at the bells' insanity,

  As if _he_ knew aught!

  The patient Night

  Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,

  She neither knows nor cares

  Why the old church sobs and brags;

  The light distresses her eyes, and tears

  Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her

  face,

  Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells' loud

  clattering disgrace.


  The wise old trees

  Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,

  While a car at the end of the street goes by with a

  laugh;

  As by degrees

  The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,

  And the stars can chaff

  The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old

  church

  Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that

  lurch

  In its cenotaph.

  IRONY

  ALWAYS, sweetheart,

  Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of

  cherry,

  Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that

  very

  Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance

  of spring

  Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days

  waiting

  In a little throng at your door, and admit the one

  who is plaiting

  Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her,

  then bid her depart.

  A come and go of March-day loves

  Through the flower-vine, trailing screen;

  A fluttering in of doves.

  Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves

  Over the waste where no hope is seen

  Of open hands:

  Dance in and out

  Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love,

  With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout

  Of mirth; then the dripping of tears on your

  glove.

  DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT

  OLD

  I HAVE opened the window to warm my hands on the

  sill

  Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon

  Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still

  In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.

  The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,

  Like savage music striking far off, and there

  On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and

  shine

  Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.

  There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and

  wistfulness and strange

  Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as

  I greet the cloud

  Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite

  dreams that range

  At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings

  of past lives crowd.

  Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the

  mellow veil

  Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of

  David and Dora,

  With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter

  that shakes the sail

  Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed

  dreams lure the unoceaned explorer.

  All the bygone, hushed years

  Streaming back where the mist distils

  Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears

  No longer shake, where the silk sail fills

  With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where

  the storm

  Of living has passed, on and on

  Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the

  warm

  Wake of the tumult now spent and gone,

  Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after

  The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.

  DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT

  NASCENT

  MY world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes

  Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;

  An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes

  The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.

  The surface of dreams is broken,

  The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.

  Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway,

  and I am woken

  From the dreams that the distance flattered.

  Along the railway, active figures of men.

  They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they

  move

  Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy

  world.

  Here in the subtle, rounded flesh

  Beats the active ecstasy.

  In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,

  The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving

  through the mesh

  Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded

  flesh.

  Oh my boys, bending over your books,

  In you is trembling and fusing

  The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a

  generation:

  And I watch to see the Creator, the power that

  patterns the dream.

  The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned,

  and sure,

  But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,

  Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,

  Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern,

  shaping and shapen?

  Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:

  Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams

  reflected on the molten metal of dreams,

  Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them

  all as a heart-beat moves the blood,

  Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working,

  Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile

  features.

  Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen