Look! We Have Come Through!   By: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

LOOK! WE HAVE COME THROUGH!

by

D. H. LAWRENCE

Published by Chatto & Windus London MCMXVII

Some of these poems have appeared in the "English Review" and in "Poetry," also in the "Georgian Anthology" and the "Imagist Anthology"

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 lustre of a man's life

CONTENTS

MOONRISE ELEGY NONENTITY MARTYR A LA MODE DON JUAN THE SEA HYMN TO PRIAPUS BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN FIRST MORNING "AND OH THAT THE MAN I AM MIGHT CEASE TO BE " SHE LOOKS BACK ON THE BALCONY FROHNLEICHNAM IN THE DARK MUTILATION HUMILIATION A YOUNG WIFE GREEN RIVER ROSES GLOIRE DE DIJON ROSES ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE I AM LIKE A ROSE ROSE OF ALL THE WORLD A YOUTH MOWING QUITE FORSAKEN FORSAKEN AND FORLORN FIREFLIES IN THE CORN A DOE AT EVENING SONG OF A MAN WHO IS NOT LOVED SINNERS MISERY SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN ITALY WINTER DAWN A BAD BEGINNING WHY DOES SHE WEEP? GIORNO DEI MORTI ALL SOULS LADY WIFE BOTH SIDES OF THE MEDAL LOGGERHEADS DECEMBER NIGHT NEW YEAR'S EVE NEW YEAR'S NIGHT VALENTINE'S NIGHT BIRTH NIGHT RABBIT SNARED IN THE NIGHT PARADISE RE ENTERED SPRING MORNING WEDLOCK HISTORY SONG OF A MAN WHO HAS COME THROUGH ONE WOMAN TO ALL WOMEN PEOPLE STREET LAMPS "SHE SAID AS WELL TO ME" NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH ELYSIUM MANIFESTO AUTUMN RAIN FROST FLOWERS CRAVING FOR SPRING

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 pass 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 Brushing 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

NONENTITY

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 grass under my feet Seems to dabble in me Like grass 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 À LA MODE

AH God, life, law, so many names you keep, You great, you patient Effort, and you Sleep That does inform this various dream of living, You sleep stretched out for ever, ever giving Us out as dreams, you august Sleep Coursed round by rhythmic movement of all time,

The constellations, your great heart, the sun Fierily pulsing, unable to refrain; Since you, vast, outstretched, wordless Sleep Permit of no beyond, ah you, whose dreams We are, and body of sleep, let it never be said I quailed at my appointed function, turned poltroon

For when at night, from out the full surcharge Of a day's experience, sleep does slowly draw The harvest, the spent action to itself; Leaves me unburdened to begin again; At night, I say, when I am gone in sleep, Does my slow heart rebel, do my dead hands Complain of what the day has had them do?