D. H. Lawrence Short Poems
Famous Short D. H. Lawrence Poems. Short poetry by famous poet D. H. Lawrence. A collection of the all-time best D. H. Lawrence short poems
by
D. H. Lawrence
The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,
The crisping steam of a train
Melts in the air, while two black birds
Sweep past the window again.
Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait
In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy
To leap down at our gate.
He has passed us by; but is it
Relief that starts in my breast?
Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still
She has no rest.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.
Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, ’neath the noise of the ash.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly.
I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all requests to head-quarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct! -
So I handed her the mirror.
And she would have broken it over my head,
but she caught sight of her own reflection
and that held her spellbound for two seconds
while I fled.
by
D. H. Lawrence
The profoundest of all sensualities
is the sense of truth
and the next deepest sensual experience
is the sense of justice.
by
D. H. Lawrence
The dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
by
D. H. Lawrence
The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on
and the horse looks at him in silence.
They are so silent, they are in another world.
by
D. H. Lawrence
I look at the swaling sunset
And wish I could go also
Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.
I wish that I could go
Through the red doors where I could put off
My shame like shoes in the porch,
My pain like garments,
And leave my flesh discarded lying
Like luggage of some departed traveller
Gone one knows not where.
Then I would turn round,
And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber,
I would laugh with joy.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.
And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life,
What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,
Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,
A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.
by
D. H. Lawrence
When along the pavement,
Palpitating flames of life,
People flicker round me,
I forget my bereavement,
The gap in the great constellation,
The place where a star used to be.
Nay, though the pole-star
Is blown out like a candle,
And all the heavens are wandering in disarray,
Yet when pleiads of people are
Deployed around me, and I see
The street’s long outstretched Milky Way,
When people flicker down the pavement,
I forget my bereavement.
by
D. H. Lawrence
All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.
But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Tell me a word
that you've often heard,
yet it makes you squint
when you see it in print!
Tell me a thing
that you've often seen
yet if put in a book
it makes you turn green!
Tell me a thing
that you often do,
when described in a story
shocks you through and through!
Tell me what's wrong
with words or with you
that you don't mind the thing
yet the name is taboo.
by
D. H. Lawrence
People were bathing and posturing themselves on the beach,
and all was dreary, great robot limbs, robot breasts,
robot voices, robot even the gay umbrellas.
But a woman, shy and alone, was washing herself under a tap and the glimmer of the presence of the gods was like
lilies, and like water-lilies.
by
D. H. Lawrence
A yellow leaf from the darkness
Hops like a frog before me.
Why should I start and stand still?
I was watching the woman that bore me
Stretched in the brindled darkness
Of the sick-room, rigid with will
To die: and the quick leaf tore me
Back to this rainy swill
Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.
by
D. H. Lawrence
When the wind blows her veil
And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
From the woes I bewail
Of love and hereafter:
When the wind blows her veil
I cease, I turn pale.
by
D. H. Lawrence
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
by
D. H. Lawrence
I can’t stand Willy Wet-Leg,
Can’t stand him at any price.
He’s resigned, and when you hit him
he lets you hit him twice.
by
D. H. Lawrence
We are a liars, because
the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,
whereas letters are fixed,
and we live by the letter of truth.
The love I feel for my friend, this year,
is different from the love I felt last year.
If it were not so, it would be a lie.
Yet we reiterate love! love! love!
as if it were a coin with a fixed value
instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Forever nameless
Forever unknwon
Forever unconceived
Forever unrepresented
yet forever felt in the soul.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Why does the thin grey strand
Floating up from the forgotten
Cigarette between my fingers,
Why does it trouble me?
Ah, you will understand;
When I carried my mother downstairs,
A few times only, at the beginning
Of her soft-foot malady,
I should find, for a reprimand
To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs
On the breast of my coat; and one by one
I let them float up the dark chimney.
by
D. H. Lawrence
Search for nothing any more, nothing
except truth.
Be very still, and try and get at the truth.
And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I?
by
D. H. Lawrence
The feelings I don't have I don't have.
The feeling I don't have, I won't say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven't got them.
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all
You'd better abandon all ideas of feelings altogether.
by
D. H. Lawrence
A wind comes from the north
Blowing little flocks of birds
Like spray across the town,
And a train, roaring forth,
Rushes stampeding down
With cries and flying curds
Of steam, out of the darkening north.
Whither I turn and set
Like a needle steadfastly,
Waiting ever to get
The news that she is free;
But ever fixed, as yet,
To the lode of her agony.
by
D. H. Lawrence
High and smaller goes the moon, she is small and very far from me,
Wistful and candid, watching me wistfully, and I see
Trembling blue in her pallor a tear that surely I have seen before,
A tear which I had hoped that even hell held not again in store.
by
D. H. Lawrence
There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
like the eye of a violet.
by
D. H. Lawrence
There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fireglow.
This fireglow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.
Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.
Your shoulders, your bruised throat!
You breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!
As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!