Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 852
then disappearing back with a hiss
of eternal salt rage; angry is old ocean within a man.
Desire Goes Down into the Sea
I — have no desire any more
towards woman or man, bird, beast or creature or thing.
All day long I feel the tide rocking, rocking
though it strikes no shore
in me.
Only mid-ocean —
The Sea, the Sea
The sea dissolves so much
and the moon makes away with so much more than we know —
Once the moon comes down
and the sea gets hold of us
cities dissolve like rock-salt
and the sugar melts out of life
iron washes away like an old blood-stain
gold goes out into a green shadow
money makes even no sediment
and only the heart
glitters in salty triumph
over all it has known, that has gone now into salty nothingness.
Old Song
The day is ending, the night descending
the heart is frozen, the spirit dead;
but the moon is wending her way, attending
to other things that are not yet said.
Good Husbands Make Unhappy Wives
Good husbands make unhappy wives
so do bad husbands, just as often;
but the unhappiness of a wife with a good husband
is much more devastating
than the unhappiness of a wife with a bad husband.
November by the Sea
Now in November nearer comes the sun
down the abandoned heaven.
As the dark closes round him, he draws nearer
as if for our company.
At the base of the lower brain
the sun in me declines to his winter solstice
and darts a few gold rays
back to the old year’s sun across the sea.
A few gold rays thickening down to red
as the sun of my soul is setting
setting fierce and undaunted, wintry
but setting, setting behind the sounding sea between my ribs.
The wide sea wins, and the dark,
winter, and the great day-sun, and the sun in my soul
sinks, sinks to setting and the winter solstice
downward, they race in decline
my sun, and the great gold sun.
Fight! O My Young Men
Fight! don’t you feel you’re fading
into slow death?
Fight then, poor duffers degrading
your very breath.
Open your half-dead eyes
you half-alive young,
look round and realise
the muck from which you’ve sprung.
The money-muck, you simple flowers
of your forefathers’ muck-heap;
and the money-muck-worms, the extant powers
that have got you in keep.
Old money-worms, young money-worms
money-worm professors
spinning a glamour round money, and clergymen
lifting a bank-book to bless us!
In the odour of lucrative sanctity
stand they - and god, how they stink!
Rise then, my young men, rise at them!
Or if you can’t rise, just think —
Think of the world that you’re stifling in,
think what a world it might be!
Think of the rubbish you’re trifling in
with enfeebled vitality!
And then, if you amount to a hill o’ beans
start in and bust it all;
money, hypocrisy, greed, machines
that have ground you so small.
Women Want Fighters for Their Lovers
Women don’t want wistful
mushy pathetic young men
struggling in doubtful embraces
then trying again.
Mushy and treacherous, tiny
Peterlets, Georgelets, Hamlets
Tomlets, Dicklets, Harrylets, whiney
Jimlets and self-sorry Samlets.
Women are sick of consoling
inconsolable youth, dead-beat;
pouring comfort and condoling
down the sink of the male conceit.
Woman want fighters, fighters
and the fighting cock.
Can’t you give it them, blighters!
The fighting cock, the fighting cock —
have you got one, little blighters?
Let it crow then, like one o’clock!
It’s Either You Fight Or You Die
It’s either you fight or you die
young gents, you’ve got no option.
No good asking the reason why
it’s either to fight or you die
die, die, lily-liveredly die
or fight and make the splinters fly
bust up the holy apple-pie
you’ve got no option.
Don’t say you can’t, start in and try;
give great hypocrisy the lie
and tackle the blowsy big blow-fly
of money; do it or die!
You’ve got no option.
Don’ts
Fight your little fight, my boy
fight and be a man.
Don’t be a good little, good little boy
being as good as you can
and agreeing with all the mealy-mouthed, mealy-mouthed
truths that the sly trot out
to protect themselves and their greedy-mouthed, greedy-mouthed
cowardice, every lout.
Don’t live up to the dear little girl who costs
you your manhood, and makes you pay.
Nor the dear old mater who so proudly boasts
that you’ll make your way.
Don’t earn golden opinions, opinions golden,
or at least worth Treasury notes,
from all sorts of men; don’t be beholden
to the herd inside the pen.
Don’t long to have dear little, dear little boys
whom you’ll have to educate
to earn their living; nor yet girls, sweet joys
who will find it so hard to mate.
Nor a dear little home, with its cost, its cost
that you have to pay,
earning your living while your life is lost
and dull death comes in a day.
Don’t be sucked in by the su-superior,
don’t swallow the culture bait,
don’t drink, don’t drink and get beerier and beerier,
do learn to discriminate.
Do hold yourself together, and fight
with a hit-hit here and a hit-hit there,
and a comfortable feeling at night
that you’ve let in a little air.
A little fresh air in the money sty,
knocked a little hole in the holy prison,
done your little bit, made your own little try
that the risen Christ should be risen.
The Risen Lord
The risen lord, the risen lord
has risen in the flesh,
and treads the earth to feel the soil
though his feet are still nesh.
The risen lord, the risen lord
has opened his eyes afresh,
and sees strange looks on the faces of men
all held in leash.
And he says: I never have seen them before,
these people of flesh;
these are no spirits caught and sore
in the physical mesh.
They are substance itself, that flows in thick
flame of flesh forever travelling
like the flame of a candle, slow and quick
fluttering and softly unravelling.
It moves, it ripples, and all the time
it changes, and with it change
moods, thoughts, desires, and deeds that chime
with the rippling fleshly change.
I — never saw them, how they must soften
themselves with oil, and lard
their guts with a certain fat, and often
laugh, and laugh hard.
If they didn’t, if they did not soften
themselves with oil, and lard
their guts with a certain fat, and often
laugh, and laugh hard
they would not be men, and they must be men,
they are their own flesh. - I lay
in the tomb and was not; I have risen again
to look the other way.
Lo! I am flesh, and the blood that races
is me in the narrows of my wrists.
Lo, I see fear in the twisted faces
of men, they clench fear in their fists!
Lo! on the other side the grave
I — have conquered the fear of death,
but the fear of life is still here; I am brave
yet I fear my own breath.
Now I must conquer the fear of life,
the knock of the blood in my wrists,
the breath that rushes through my nose, the strife
of desires in the loins’ dark twists,
What do you want, wild loins? and what
do you want, warm heart? and what
wide eyes and wondering spirit? - not
death, no death for your lot!
They ask, and they must be answered; they
are, and they shall be, to the end.
Lo! there is woman, and her way is a strange way,
I — must follow also her trend.
I died, and death is neuter; it speaks not, it gives
no answer; man rises again
with mouth and loins and needs, he lives
again man among men.
So it is, so it will be, for ever and ever.
And still the great needs of men
will clamour forth from the flesh, and never
can denial deny them again.
The Secret Waters
What was lost is found
what was wounded is sound,
the key of life on the body of men
unlocks the fountains of peace again.
The fountains of peace, the fountains of peace
well softly up for a new increase,
but they bubble under the heavy wall
of this house of life that encloses us all.
They bubble under the heavy wall
that was once a house, and is now a prison,
and never a one among us all
knows that the waters have risen.
None of us knows, O none of us knows
the welling of peace when it rises and flows
in secret under the sickening wall
of the prison of man that encloses us all.
And we shall not know, we shall not know
till the secret water overflow
and loosen the brick and the hard cement
of the walls within which our lives are spent.
Till the walls begin to loosen and crack,
to gape and our house is going to wrack
and ruin above us, and the crash of release
is death to us all, in the marshes of peace.
Obscenity
The body of itself is clean, but the caged mind
is a sewer inside, it pollutes, O it pollutes
the guts and the stones and the womb, rots them down, leaves a
rind
of maquillage53 and pose and malice that would shame the brutes.
Beware! O My Dear Young Men
Beware, O my dear young men, of going rotten.
It’s so easy to follow suit;
people in their thirties, and the older ones, have gotten
bad inside, like fruit
that nobody eats and nobody wants, so it rots, but is not forgotten.
Rotten inside, they are, and seething
with small obscenities;
and they whisper it out, and they titter it out, breathing
among soft amenities,
a vapour of rottenness out of their mouths, like sewer-stench
wreathing.
And it’s funny, my dear young men, that you in your twenties
should love the sewer scent
of obscenity, and lift your noses where the vent is
and run towards it, bent
on smelling it all, before your bit of vitality spent is.
For obscenity, after all, my dear young men
is only mental dirt,
the dirty mind like a urinal again
or a dung squirt;
and I thought you wanted life and experience, dear young men!
All this obscenity is just mental, mental, mental,
it’s the village-idiot mind
playing with muck; and I thought you young gents experimental
were out to find
new life for yourselves and your women, complemental.
But if obscene village idiots you want to be, then be it.
But don’t imagine you’ll get
satisfactory experience from it; can’t you see it?
the idiot with his chin all wet
goggling obscenities! If that’s you and your fate, why then, dree it.
Sex Isn’t Sin
Sex isn’t sin, ah no! sex isn’t sin,
nor is it dirty, not until the dirty mind pokes in.
We shall do as we like, sin is obsolete, the young assert.
Sin is obsolete, sin is obsolete, but not so dirt.
And sex, alas, gets dirtier and dirtier, worked from the mind.
Sex gets dirtier and dirtier, the more it is fooled with, we find.
And dirt, if it isn’t sin, is worse, so there you are!
Why don’t you know what’s what, young people? seems to me you’re
far
duller than your grandmothers. But leave that aside.
Let’s be honest at last about sex, or show at least that we’ve tried.
Sex isn’t sin, it’s a delicate flow between women and men,
and the sin is to damage the flow, force it up or dirty it or suppress it
again.
Sex isn’t something you’ve got to play with; sex is you.
It’s the flow of your life, it’s your moving self, and you are due
to be true to the nature of it, its reserve, its sensitive pride
that it always has to begin with, and by which you ought to abide.
Know yourself, O know yourself, that you are mortal; and know.
the sensitive delicacy of your sex, in its ebbing to and fro,
and the mortal reserve of your sex, as it stays in your depths below.
And don’t, with the nasty, prying mind, drag if out from its deeps
and finger it and force it, and shatter the rhythm it keeps
when it’s left alone, as it stirs and rouses and sleeps.
O — know yourself, O know your sex! You must know, there is no
escape.
You must know sex in order to save it, your deepest self, from the rape
of the itching mind and the mental self, with its pruriency always
agape.
Sex and Trust
If you want to have sex, you’ve got to trust
at the core of your heart, the other creature.
The other creature, the other creature
not merely the personal upstart;
but the creature there, that has come to meet you;
trust it you must, you must
or the experience amounts to nothing,
mere evacuation lust.
The Gazelle Calf
The gazelle calf, O my children
goes behind its mother across the desert
goes behind its mother on blithe bare foot
requiring no shoes, O my children!
The Elephant is Slow to Mate
The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse
and dash in a panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.
Little Fish
The tiny fish enjoy themselves
in the sea.
Quick little splinters of life,
their little lives are fun to them
in the sea.
The Mosquito Knows
The mosquito knows full well, small as he is
he’s a beast of prey.
But after all
he only takes his bellyful,
he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.
Self-Pity
I — never saw a wild thing
