Part 1 (1/2)

Look! We Have Come Through!

by D. H. Lawrence.

FOREWORD

THESE poems should not be considered separately, as so many single pieces. They are intended as an essential story, or history, or confession, unfolding one from the other in organic development, the whole revealing the intrinsic experience of a man during the crisis of manhood, when he marries and comes into himself. The period covered is, roughly, the sixth l.u.s.tre of a man's life

ARGUMENT

_After much struggling and loss in love and in the world of man, the protagonist throws in his lot with a woman who is already married.

Together they go into another country, she perforce leaving her children behind. The conflict of love and hate goes on between the man and the woman, and between these two and the world around them, till it reaches some sort of conclusion, they transcend into some condition of blessedness_

_MOONRISE_

AND who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us Spread out and known at last, and we are sure That beauty is a thing beyond the grave, That perfect, bright experience never falls To nothingness, and time will dim the moon Sooner than our full consummation here In this odd life will tarnish or pa.s.s away.

_ELEGY_

THE sun immense and rosy Must have sunk and become extinct The night you closed your eyes for ever against me.

Grey days, and wan, dree dawnings Since then, with fritter of flowers-- Day wearies me with its ostentation and fawnings.

Still, you left me the nights, The great dark glittery window, The bubble hemming this empty existence with lights.

Still in the vast hollow Like a breath in a bubble spinning Brus.h.i.+ng the stars, goes my soul, that skims the bounds like a swallow!

I can look through The film of the bubble night, to where you are.

Through the film I can almost touch you.

EASTWOOD

_NONENt.i.tY_

THE stars that open and shut Fall on my shallow breast Like stars on a pool.

The soft wind, blowing cool Laps little crest after crest Of ripples across my breast.

And dark gra.s.s under my feet Seems to dabble in me Like gra.s.s in a brook.

Oh, and it is sweet To be all these things, not to be Any more myself.

For look, I am weary of myself!

_MARTYR a LA MODE_