The Enkindled Spring / D.H. Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, 

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, 

Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between 

Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. 

The End / D.H. Lawrence

If I could have put you in my heart, 

If but I could have wrapped you in myself, 

How glad I should have been! 

And now the chart 

Of memory unrolls again to me 

The course of our journey here, before we had to part. 

The Bride / D.H. Lawrence

My love looks like a girl to-night, 

But she is old. 

The plaits that lie along her pillow 

Are not gold, 

But threaded with filigree, 

And uncanny cold. 

Tease / D.H. Lawrence

I will give you all my keys, 

You shall be my châtelaine, 

You shall enter as you please, 

As you please shall go again. 

Tarantella / D.H. Lawrence

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. 

Suburbs on a Hazy Day / D.H. Lawrence

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? 

Submergence / D.H. Lawrence

When along the pavement, 

Palpitating flames of life, 

People flicker round me, 

I forget my bereavement, 

The gap in the great constellation, 

The place where a star used to be. 

Study / D.H. Lawrence

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--)

Sorrow / D.H. Lawrence

Why does the thin grey strand 

Floating up from the forgotten 

Cigarette between my fingers, 

Why does it trouble me? 

Snap Dragon / D.H. Lawrence

She bade me follow to her garden, where 

The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup 

Between the old grey walls; I did not dare 

To raise my face, I did not dare look up, 

Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in 

My windows of discovery, and shrill "Sin." 

Snake / D.H. Lawrence

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher

And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

Silence / D.H. Lawrence

Since I lost you I am silence-haunted, 

Sounds wave their little wings 

A moment, then in weariness settle 

On the flood that soundless swings. 

Sigh No More / D.H. Lawrence

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

Sickness / D.H. Lawrence

Waving slowly before me, pushed into the dark, 

Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the bark 

Of my body slowly behind. 

Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night 

Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if in their flight 

My hands should touch the door! 

Seven Seals / D.H. Lawrence

Since this is the last night I keep you home, 

Come, I will consecrate you for the journey. 

Rather I had you would not go. Nay come, 

I will not again reproach you. Lie back 

And let me love you a long time ere you go. 

For you are sullen-hearted still, and lack 

The will to love me. But even so 

I will set a seal upon you from my lip, 

Will set a guard of honour at each door, 

Seal up each channel out of which might slip 

Your love for me.

School on the Outskirts / D.H. Lawrence

How different, in the middle of snows, the great school rises red! 

A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round with clusters of shouting lads, 

Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that cling as the souls of the dead 

In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate dark monads. 

Scent of Irises / D.H. Lawrence

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. 

Restlessness / D.H. Lawrence

At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night, 

Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight, 

Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room. 

I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light, 

And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might 

Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb. 

Reproach / D.H. Lawrence

Had I but known yesterday, 

Helen, you could discharge the ache 

Out of the cloud; 

Had I known yesterday you could take 

The turgid electric ache away, 

Drink it up with your proud 

White body, as lovely white lightning 

Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth, 

I might have hated you, Helen. 

Reading a Letter / D.H. Lawrence

She sits on the recreation ground 

Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale blue sky. 

The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound 

Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy.