Grey Evening

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped

Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields

Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped

And garnered that the golden daylight yields.

 

 

 

 

D. H. Lawrence

 

 

 

Scent of Irises

 

 

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.

 

I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless

Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast you

With fire on your cheeks and your brow and your chin as you dipped

Your face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrast you,

Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks,

Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should not outlast.

 

You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation,

You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above,

Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,

Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love;

You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent,

You with your face all rich, like the sheen of a dove.

 

You are always asking, do I remember, remember

The butter-cup bog-end where the flowers rose up

And kindled you over deep with a cast of gold?

You ask again, do the healing days close up

The open darkness which then drew us in,

The dark which then drank up our brimming cup.

 

You upon the dry, dead beech-leaves, in the fire of night

Burnt like a sacrifice; you invisible;

Only the fire of darkness, and the scent of you!

--And yes, thank God, it still is possible

The healing days shall close the darkness up

Wherein we fainted like a smoke or dew.

 

Like vapour, dew, or poison. Now, thank God,

The fire of night is gone, and your face is ash

Indistinguishable on the grey, chill day;

The night has burnt us out, at last the good

Dark fire burns on untroubled, without clash

Of you upon the dead leaves saying me Yea.

 

 

 

Grey Evening

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you

My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?

My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,

And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

 

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped

Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields

Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped

And garnered that the golden daylight yields.

 

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among

The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,

As farther off the scythe of night is swung,

And little stars come rolling from their husk.

 

And all the earth is gone into a dust

Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,

Covered with aged lichens, pale with must,

And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

 

And so I sit and scan the book of grey,

Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,

All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding

With wounds of sunset and the dying day.

 

 

 

 

Discipline

 

 

 

IT is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane,

The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves;

The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains

The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves.

 

It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long.

I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul

And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong

Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil's little control.

 

And there is the dark, my darling, where the roots are entangled and fight

Each one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, I know that there

In the night where we first have being, before we rise on the light,

We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and we do not spare.

 

And in the original dark the roots cannot keep, cannot know

Any communion whatever, but they bind themselves on to the dark,

And drawing the darkness together, crush from it a twilight, a slow

Burning that breaks at last into leaves and a flower's bright spark.

 

I came to the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me;

I came with gentleness, with my heart 'twixt my hands like a bowl,

Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly

And tried to break the vessel, and to violate my soul.

 

But what have I to do with the boys, deep down in my soul, my love?

I throw from out of the darkness my self like a flower into sight,

Like a flower from out of the night-time, I lift my face, and those

Who will may warm their hands at me, comfort this night.

 

But whosoever would pluck apart my flowering shall burn their hands,

So flowers are tender folk, and roots can only hide,

Yet my flowerings of love are a fire, and the scarlet brands

Of my love are roses to look at, but flames to chide.

 

But comfort me, my love, now the fires are low,

Now I am broken to earth like a winter destroyed, and all

Myself but a knowledge of roots, of roots in the dark that throw

A net on the undersoil, which lies passive beneath their thrall.

 

But comfort me, for henceforth my love is yours alone,

To you alone will I offer the bowl, to you will I give

My essence only, but love me, and I will atone

To you for my general loving, atone as long as I live.

 

 

 

 

Blue

 

 

 

 

THE earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over

The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide

Slowly into another day; slowly the rover

Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.

 

I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting

Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped

And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting

The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.

 

Feeling myself undawning, the day's light playing upon me,

I who am substance of shadow, I all compact

Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly

Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.

 

I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;

And what do I care though the very stones should cry me unreal, though the clouds

Shine in conceit of substance upon me, who am less than the rain.

Do I not know the darkness within them? What are they but shrouds?

 

The clouds go down the sky with a wealthy ease

Casting a shadow of scorn upon me for my share in death; but I

Hold my own in the midst of them, darkling, defy

The whole of the day to extinguish the shadow I lift on the breeze.

 

Yea, though the very clouds have vantage over me,

Enjoying their glancing flight, though my love is dead,

I still am not homeless here, I've a tent by day

Of darkness where she sleeps on her perfect bed.

 

And I know the host, the minute sparkling of darkness

Which vibrates untouched and virile through the grandeur of night,

But which, when dawn crows challenge, assaulting the vivid motes

Of living darkness, bursts fretfully, and is bright:

Runs like a fretted arc-lamp into light,

Stirred by conflict to shining, which else

Were dark and whole with the night.

 

Runs to a fret of speed like a racing wheel,

Which else were aslumber along with the whole

Of the dark, swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel.

 

Is chafed to anger, bursts into rage like thunder;

Which else were a silent grasp that held the

heavens

Arrested, beating thick with wonder.

 

Leaps like a fountain of blue sparks leaping

In a jet from out of obscurity,

Which erst was darkness sleeping.

 

Runs into streams of bright blue drops,

Water and stones and stars, and myriads

Of twin-blue eyes, and crops

 

Of floury grain, and all the hosts of day,

All lovely hosts of ripples caused by fretting

The Darkness into play.