the very door.
You have surely achieved your fate;
And the perfect dead are elate
    To have won once more.

Now to the dead you are giving
    Your last allegiance.
But what of us who are living
And fearful yet of believing
    In your pitiless legions.

SHADES

SHALL I tell you, then, how it is?—
There came a cloven gleam
Like a tongue of darkened flame
To flicker in me.

And so I seem
To have you still the same
In one world with me.

In the flicker of a flower,
In a worm that is blind, yet strives,
In a mouse that pauses to listen

Glimmers our
Shadow; yet it deprives
Them none of their glisten.

In every shaken morsel
I see our shadow tremble
As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand.

As if it were part and parcel,
One shadow, and we need not dissemble
Our darkness: do you understand?

For I have told you plainly how it is.

BREAD UPON THE WATERS.

SO you are lost to me!
Ah you, you ear of corn straight lying,
What food is this for the darkly flying
Fowls of the Afterwards!

White bread afloat on the waters,
Cast out by the hand that scatters
Food untowards,

Will you come back when the tide turns?
After many days? My heart yearns
To know.

Will you return after many days
To say your say as a traveller says,
More marvel than woe?

Drift then, for the sightless birds
And the fish in shadow-waved herds
To approach you.

Drift then, bread cast out;
Drift, lest I fall in doubt,
And reproach you.

For you are lost to me!

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.

RONDEAU OF A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.

THE hours have tumbled their leaden, mono-
  tonous sands
And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the
  West.
I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands;
To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I
  detest.

I force my cart through the sodden filth that is pressed
Into ooze, and the sombre dirt spouts up at my hands
As I make my way in twilight now to rest.
The hours have tumbled their leaden, monotonous
  sands.

A twisted thorn-tree still in the evening stands
Defending the memory of leaves and the happy round
  nest.
But mud has flooded the homes of these weary lands
And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West.

All day has the clank of iron on iron distressed
The nerve-bare place. Now a little silence expands
And a gasp of relief. But the soul is still compressed:
I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands.

The hours have ceased to fall, and a star commands
Shadows to cover our stricken manhood, and blest
Sleep to make us forget: but he understands:
To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours
  I detest.

TOMMIES IN THE TRAIN

THE SUN SHINES,
The coltsfoot flowers along the railway banks
Shine like flat coin which Jove in thanks
Strews each side the lines.

A steeple
In purple elms, daffodils
Sparkle beneath; luminous hills
Beyond—and no people.

England, Oh Danaë
To this spring of cosmic gold
That falls on your lap of mould!
What then are we?

What are we
Clay-coloured, who roll in fatigue
As the train falls league by league
From our destiny?

A hand is over my face,
A cold hand. I peep between the fingers
To watch the world that lingers
Behind, yet keeps pace.

Always there, as I peep
Between the fingers that cover my face!
Which then is it that falls from its place
And rolls down the steep?

Is it the train
That falls like meteorite
Backward into space, to alight
Never again?

Or is it the illusory world
That falls from reality
As we look? Or are we
Like a thunderbolt hurled?

One or another
Is lost, since we fall apart
Endlessly, in one motion depart
From each other.

WAR-BABY

THE CHILD like mustard-seed
Rolls out of the husk of death
   Into the woman's fertile, fathomless lap.

Look, it has taken root!
See how it flourisheth.
   See how it rises with magical, rosy sap!

As for our faith, it was there
When we did not know, did not care;
   It fell from our husk like a little, hasty seed.

Sing, it is all we need.
Sing, for the little weed
   Will flourish its branches in heaven when we
     slumber beneath.

NOSTALGIA

THE WANING MOON looks upward; this
   grey night
Slopes round the heavens in one smooth curve
Of easy sailing; odd red wicks serve
To show where the ships at sea move out of sight.

The place is palpable me, for here I was born
Of this self-same darkness. Yet the shadowy house
   below
Is out of bounds, and only the old ghosts know
I have come, I feel them whimper in welcome, and
   mourn.

My father suddenly died in the harvesting corn
And the place is no longer ours. Watching, I hear
No sound from the strangers, the place is dark, and fear
Opens my eyes till the roots of my vision seems torn.

Can I go no nearer, never towards the door?
The ghosts and I we mourn together, and shrink
In the shadow of the cart-shed. Must we hover on
   the brink
Forever, and never enter the homestead any more?

Is it irrevocable? Can I really not go
Through the open yard-way? Can I not go past the
   sheds
And through to the mowie?—Only the dead in their
   beds
Can know the fearful anguish that this is so.

I kiss the stones, I kiss the moss on the wall,
And wish I could pass impregnate into the place.
I wish I could take it all in a last embrace.
I wish with my breast I here could annihilate it all.

HERE ENDS BAY A BOOK OF POEMS BY
 D. H. Lawrence The Cover and the Decorations
  designed by Anne Estelle Rice The Typography
   and Binding arranged by Cyril W. Beaumont
   Printed by Hand on his Press at 75 Charing
     Cross Road in the City of Westminster
      Completed November