New Poems

  The Project Gutenberg EBook of New Poems, by D. H. Lawrence

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  Title: New Poems

  Author: D. H. Lawrence

  Release Date: September 22, 2007 [EBook #22726]

  Language: English

  Character set encoding: ASCII

  *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS ***

  Produced by Lewis Jones

  D.H. Lawrence (1918) _New Poems_

  NEW POEMS

  POEMS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  LOVE POEMS AND OTHERS

  AMORES

  LOOK, WE HAVE COME THROUGH

  FIRST PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1918

  NEW EDITION (RESET), AUGUST, 1919

  New Poems

  By D. H. Lawrence

  London: Martin Seeker

  TO

  AMY LOWELL

  THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND

  CONTENTS

  Apprehension

  Coming Awake

  From a College Window

  Flapper

  Birdcage Walk

  Letter from Town: The Almond Tree

  Flat Suburbs, S.W., in the Morning

  Thief in the Night

  Letter from Town: On a Grey Evening in March

  Suburbs on a Hazy Day

  Hyde Park at Night: Clerks

  Gipsy

  Two-Fold

  Under the Oak

  Sigh no More

  Love Storm

  Parliament Hill in the Evening

  Piccadilly Circus at Night: Street Walkers

  Tarantella

  In Church

  Piano

  Embankment at Night: Charity

  Phantasmagoria

  Next Morning

  Palimpsest of Twilight

  Embankment at Night: Outcasts

  Winter in the Boulevard

  School on the Outskirts

  Sickness

  Everlasting Flowers

  The North Country

  Bitterness of Death

  Seven Seals

  Reading a Letter

  Twenty Years Ago

  Intime

  Two Wives

  Heimweh

  Debacle

  Narcissus

  Autumn Sunshine

  On That Day

  APPREHENSION

  AND all hours long, the town

  Roars like a beast in a cave

  That is wounded there

  And like to drown;

  While days rush, wave after wave

  On its lair.

  An invisible woe unseals

  The flood, so it passes beyond

  All bounds: the great old city

  Recumbent roars as it feels

  The foamy paw of the pond

  Reach from immensity.

  But all that it can do

  Now, as the tide rises,

  Is to listen and hear the grim

  Waves crash like thunder through

  The splintered streets, hear noises

  Roll hollow in the interim.

  COMING AWAKE

  WHEN I woke, the lake-lights were quivering on the

  wall,

  The sunshine swam in a shoal across and across,

  And a hairy, big bee hung over the primulas

  In the window, his body black fur, and the sound

  of him cross.

  There was something I ought to remember: and

  yet

  I did not remember. Why should I? The run-

  ning lights

  And the airy primulas, oblivious

  Of the impending bee--they were fair enough

  sights.

  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.

  FLAPPER

  LOVE has crept out of her sealed heart

  As a field-bee, black and amber,

  Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber

  Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.

  Mischief has come in her dawning eyes,

  And a glint of coloured iris brings

  Such as lies along the folded wings

  Of the bee before he flies.

  Who, with a ruffling, careful breath,

  Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite?

  Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight

  In her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth?

  Love makes the burden of her voice.

  The hum of his heavy, staggering wings

  Sets quivering with wisdom the common

  things

  That she says, and her words rejoice.

  BIRDCAGE WALK

  WHEN the wind blows her veil

  And uncovers her laughter

  I cease, I turn pale.

  When the wind blows her veil

  From the woes I bewail

  Of love and hereafter:

  When the wind blows her veil

  I cease, I turn pale.

  LETTER FROM TOWN: THE

  ALMOND TREE

  YOU promised to send me some violets. Did you

  forget?

  White ones and blue ones from under the orchard

  hedge?

  Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a

  pledge

  Of our early love that hardly has opened yet.

  Here there's an almond tree--you have never seen

  Such a one in the north--it flowers on the street,

  and I stand

  Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers

  that expand

  At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean.

  Under the almond tree, the happy lands

  Provence, Japan, and Italy repose,

  And passing feet are chatter and clapping of

  those

  Who play around us, country girls clapping their

  hands.

  You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown,

  All your unbearable tenderness, you with the

  laughter

  Startled upon your eyes now so wide with here-

  after,

  You with loose hands of abandonment hanging

  down.

  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.

  THIEF IN THE NIGHT

  LAST night a thief came to me

  And struck at me with something dark.

  I cried, but no one could hear me,

  I lay dumb and stark.

  When I awoke this morning

  I could find no trace;

  Perhaps 'twas a dream of warning,

  For I've lost my peace.

  LETTER FROM TOWN: ON A

  GREY EVENING IN MARCH

  THE clouds are pushing in grey reluctance slowly

  northward to you,

  While north of them all, at the farthest ends,

  stands one bright-bosomed, aglance

  With fire as it guards the wild north cloud-coasts,

  red-fire seas running through

  The rocks where ravens flying to windward melt

  as a well-shot lance.

  You should be out by the orchard, where violets

  secretly darken the earth,

  Or there in the woods of the twilight, with

  northern wind-flowers shaken astir.

  Think of me here in the library, trying and trying

  a song that is worth

  Tears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour

  will turn or deter.

  You tell me the lambs have come, they lie like

  daisies white in the grass

  Of the dark-green hills; new calves in shed;

  peewits turn after the plough--

  It is well for you. For me the navvies work in the

  road where I pass

  And I want to smite in anger the barren rock of

  each waterless brow.

  Like the sough of a wind that is caught up high in

  the mesh of the budding trees,

  A sudden car goes sweeping past, and I strain my

  soul to hear

  The voice of the furtive triumphant engine as it

  rushes past like a breeze,

  To hear on its mocking triumphance unwitting

  the after-echo of fear.

  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!

  HYDE PARK AT NIGHT, BEFORE

  THE WAR

  _Clerks_.

  WE have shut the doors behind us, and the velvet

  flowers of night

  Lean about us scattering their pollen grains of

  golden light.

  Now at last we lift our faces, and our faces come

  aflower

  To the night that takes us willing, liberates us to the

  hour.

  Now at last the ink and dudgeon passes from our

  fervent eyes

  And out of the chambered weariness wanders a

  spirit abroad on its enterprise.

  Not too near and not too far

  Out of the stress of the crowd

  Music screams as elephants scream

  When they lift their trunks and scream aloud

  For joy of the night when masters are

  Asleep and adream.

  So here I hide in the Shalimar

  With a wanton princess slender and proud,

  And we swoon with kisses, swoon till we seem

  Two streaming peacocks gone in a cloud

  Of golden dust, with star after star

  On our stream.

  GIPSY

  I, THE man with the red scarf,

  Will give thee what I have, this last week's earn-

  ings.

  Take them, and buy thee a silver ring

  And wed me, to ease my yearnings.

  For the rest, when thou art wedded

  I'll wet my brow for thee

  With sweat, I'll enter a house for thy sake,

  Thou shalt shut doors on me.

  TWO-FOLD

  How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur

  cleaving

  All with a flash of blue!--when will she be leaving

  Her room, where the night still hangs like a half-

  folded bat,

  And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like

  must in a vat.

  UNDER THE OAK

  You, if you were sensible,

  When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one

  dreadful,

  You would not turn and answer me

  "The night is wonderful."

  Even you, if you knew

  How this darkness soaks me through and through,

  and infuses

  Unholy fear in my vapour, you would pause to dis-

  tinguish

  What hurts, from what amuses.

  For I tell you

  Beneath this powerful tree, my whole soul's fluid

  Oozes away from me as a sacrifice steam

  At the knife of a Druid.

  Again I tell you, I bleed, I am bound with withies,

  My life runs out.

  I tell you my blood runs out on the floor of this oak,

  Gout upon gout.

  Above me springs the blood-born mistletoe

  In the shady smoke.

  But who are you, twittering to and fro

  Beneath the oak?

  What thing better are you, what worse?

  What have you to do with the mysteries

  Of this ancient place, of my ancient curse?

  What place have you in my histories?

  SIGH NO MORE

  THE cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling,

  Calling,

  Of a meaningless monotony is palling

  All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered

  wood.

  May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling,

  Falling

  In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling

  Messages of true-love down the dust of the high-

  road.

  I do not like to hear the gentle grieving,

  Grieving

  Of the she-dove in the blossom, still believing

  Love will yet again return to her and make all good.

  When I know that there must ever be deceiving,

  Deceiving

  Of the mournful constant heart, that while she's

  weaving

  Her woes, her lover woos and sings within another

  wood.

  Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling,

  Stalling

  A progress down the intricate enthralling

  By-paths where the wanton-headed flowers doff

  their hood.

  And like a laughter leads me onward, heaving,

  Heaving

  A sigh among the shadows, thus retrieving

  A decent short regret for that which once was very

  good.

 
LOVE STORM

  MANY roses in the wind

  Are tapping at the window-sash.

  A hawk is in the sky; his wings

  Slowly begin to plash.

  The roses with the west wind rapping

  Are torn away, and a splash

  Of red goes down the billowing air.

  Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky moving

  Past him--only a wing-beat proving

  The will that holds him there.

  The daisies in the grass are bending,

  The hawk has dropped, the wind is spending

  All the roses, and unending

  Rustle of leaves washes out the rending

  Cry of a bird.

  A red rose goes on the wind.--Ascending

  The hawk his wind-swept way is wending

  Easily down the sky. The daisies, sending

  Strange white signals, seem intending

  To show the place whence the scream was heard.

  But, oh, my heart, what birds are piping!

  A silver wind is hastily wiping

  The face of the youngest rose.

  And oh, my heart, cease apprehending!

  The hawk is gone, a rose is tapping

  The window-sash as the west-wind blows.

  Knock, knock, 'tis no more than a red rose rapping,

  And fear is a plash of wings.

  What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping

  Down the bright-grey ruin of things!

  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.

  PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT

  _Street-Walkers_.

  WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like

  dust above the towns,

  Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in

  the midst of the downs,

  Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain

  along the street,

  Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in ex-

  pectancy to meet

  The luminous mist which the poor things wist was

  dawn arriving across the sky,

  When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town

  has driven so high.

  All the birds are folded in a silent ball of sleep,

  All the flowers are faded from the asphalt isle in

  the sea,

  Only we hard-faced creatures go round and round,

  and keep

  The shores of this innermost ocean alive and

  illusory.

  Wanton sparrows that twittered when morning

  looked in at their eyes

  And the Cyprian's pavement-roses are gone, and

  now it is we

  Flowers of illusion who shine in our gauds, make a

  Paradise

  On the shores of this ceaseless ocean, gay birds of

  the town-dark sea.

  TARANTELLA

  SAD as he sits on the white sea-stone

  And the suave sea chuckles, and turns to the moon,

  And the moon significant smiles at the cliffs and

  the boulders.

  He sits like a shade by the flood alone

  While I dance a tarantella on the rocks, and the

  croon

  Of my mockery mocks at him over the waves'

  bright shoulders.

  What can I do but dance alone,

  Dance to the sliding sea and the moon,

  For the moon on my breast and the air on my limbs

  and the foam on my feet?

  For surely this earnest man has none

  Of the night in his soul, and none of the tune

  Of the waters within him; only the world's old

  wisdom to bleat.

  I wish a wild sea-fellow would come down the

  glittering shingle,

  A soulless neckar, with winking seas in his eyes

  And falling waves in his arms, and the lost soul's kiss

  On his lips: I long to be soulless, I tingle

  To touch the sea in the last surprise

  Of fiery coldness, to be gone in a lost soul's bliss.

  IN CHURCH

  IN the choir the boys are singing the hymn.

  The morning light on their lips

  Moves in silver-moist flashes, in musical trim.

  Sudden outside the high window, one crow

  Hangs in the air

  And lights on a withered oak-tree's top of woe.

  One bird, one blot, folded and still at the top

  Of the withered tree!--in the grail

  Of crystal heaven falls one full black drop.

  Like a soft full drop of darkness it seems to sway

  In the tender wine

  Of our Sabbath, suffusing our sacred day.

  PIANO

  Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

  Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see