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

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Title: Amores Poems

Author: D. H. Lawrence

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

Language: English

***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 châtelaine,
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 rôle.

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
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