Look! We Have Come Through!

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  Title: Look! We Have Come Through!

  Author: D. H. Lawrence

  Release Date: November 7, 2007 [eBook #23394]

  Language: English

  Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

  ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOOK! WE HAVE COME THROUGH!***

  E-text prepared by Lewis Jones

  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 A 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?

  Never let it be said I was poltroon

  At this my task of living, this my dream,

  This me which rises from the dark of sleep

  In white flesh robed to drape another dream,

&n
bsp; As lightning comes all white and trembling

  From out the cloud of sleep, looks round about

  One moment, sees, and swift its dream is over,

  In one rich drip it sinks to another sleep,

  And sleep thereby is one more dream enrichened.

  If so the Vast, the God, the Sleep that still grows

  richer

  Have said that I, this mote in the body of sleep

  Must in my transiency pass all through pain,

  Must be a dream of grief, must like a crude

  Dull meteorite flash only into light

  When tearing through the anguish of this life,

  Still in full flight extinct, shall I then turn

  Poltroon, and beg the silent, outspread God

  To alter my one speck of doom, when round me

  burns

  The whole great conflagration of all life,

  Lapped like a body close upon a sleep,

  Hiding and covering in the eternal Sleep

  Within the immense and toilsome life-time,

  heaved

  With ache of dreams that body forth the Sleep?

  Shall I, less than the least red grain of flesh

  Within my body, cry out to the dreaming soul

  That slowly labours in a vast travail,

  To halt the heart, divert the streaming flow

  That carries moons along, and spare the stress

  That crushes me to an unseen atom of fire?

  When pain and all

  And grief are but the same last wonder, Sleep

  Rising to dream in me a small keen dream

  Of sudden anguish, sudden over and spent--

  CROYDON

  _DON JUAN_

  IT is Isis the mystery

  Must be in love with me.

  Here this round ball of earth

  Where all the mountains sit

  Solemn in groups,

  And the bright rivers flit

  Round them for girth.

  Here the trees and troops

  Darken the shining grass,

  And many people pass

  Plundered from heaven,

  Many bright people pass,

  Plunder from heaven.

  What of the mistresses

  What the beloved seven?

  --They were but witnesses,

  I was just driven.

  Where is there peace for me?

  Isis the mystery

  Must be in love with me.

  _THE SEA_

  You, you are all unloving, loveless, you;

  Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods,

  You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even,

  Threshing your own passions with no woman for

  the threshing-floor,

  Finishing your dreams for your own sake only,

  Playing your great game around the world, alone,

  Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to

  cherish,

  No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter.

  Not like the earth, the spouse all full of increase

  Moiled over with the rearing of her many-mouthed

  young;

  You are single, you are fruitless, phosphorescent,

  cold and callous,

  Naked of worship, of love or of adornment,

  Scorning the panacea even of labour,

  Sworn to a high and splendid purposelessness

  Of brooding and delighting in the secret of life's

  goings,

  Sea, only you are free, sophisticated.

  You who toil not, you who spin not,

  Surely but for you and your like, toiling

  Were not worth while, nor spinning worth the

  effort!

  You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift

  Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out;

  You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm,

  So that they seem to utter themselves aloud;

  You who steep from out the days their colour,

  Reveal the universal tint that dyes

  Their web; who shadow the sun's great gestures

  and expressions

  So that he seems a stranger in his passing;

  Who voice the dumb night fittingly;

  Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to

  death with your shadowing.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  _HYMN TO PRIAPUS_

  MY love lies underground

  With her face upturned to mine,

  And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss

  That ended her life and mine.

  I dance at the Christmas party

  Under the mistletoe

  Along with a ripe, slack country lass

  Jostling to and fro.

  The big, soft country lass,

  Like a loose sheaf of wheat

  Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor

  At my feet.

  The warm, soft country lass,

  Sweet as an armful of wheat

  At threshing-time broken, was broken

  For me, and ah, it was sweet!

  Now I am going home

  Fulfilled and alone,

  I see the great Orion standing

  Looking down.

  He's the star of my first beloved

  Love-making.

  The witness of all that bitter-sweet

  Heart-aching.

  Now he sees this as well,

  This last commission.

  Nor do I get any look

  Of admonition.

  He can add the reckoning up

  I suppose, between now and then,

  Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult

  Ways of men.

  He has done as I have done

  No doubt:

  Remembered and forgotten

  Turn and about.

  My love lies underground

  With her face upturned to mine,

  And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss

  That ended her life and mine.

  She fares in the stark immortal

  Fields of death;

  I in these goodly, frozen

  Fields beneath.

  Something in me remembers

  And will not forget.

  The stream of my life in the darkness

  Deathward set!

  And something in me has forgotten,

  Has ceased to care.

  Desire comes up, and contentment

  Is debonair.

  I, who am worn and careful,

  How much do I care?

  How is it I grin then, and chuckle

  Over despair?

  Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient

  Grief makes us free

  To be faithless and faithful together

  As we have to be.

  _BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN_

  FIRST PART

  UPON her plodding palfrey

  With a heavy child at her breast

  And Joseph holding the bridle

  They mount to the last hill-crest.

  Dissatisfied and weary

  She sees the blade of the sea

  Dividing earth and heaven

  In a glitter of ecstasy.

  Sudden a dark-faced stranger

  With his back to the sun, holds out

  His arms; so she lights from her palfrey

  And turns her round about.

  She has given the child to Joseph,

  Gone down to the flashing shore;

  And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand,

  Stands watching evermore.

  SECOND PART

  THE sea in the stones is singing,

  A woman binds her hair

  With yellow, frail sea-poppies,

  That shine as her fingers stir.

  While a naked man comes swiftly

  Like a spu
rt of white foam rent

  From the crest of a falling breaker,

  Over the poppies sent.

  He puts his surf-wet fingers

  Over her startled eyes,

  And asks if she sees the land, the land,

  The land of her glad surmise.

  THIRD PART

  AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle

  Riding at Joseph's side,

  She says, "I went to Cythera,

  And woe betide!"

  Her heart is a swinging cradle

  That holds the perfect child,

  But the shade on her forehead ill becomes

  A mother mild.

  So on with the slow, mean journey

  In the pride of humility;

  Till they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land

  Over a sullen sea.

  While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent

  She goes far down to the shore

  To where a man in a heaving boat

  Waits with a lifted oar.

  FOURTH PART

  THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave

  And looked far down the dark

  Where an archway torn and glittering

  Shone like a huge sea-spark.

  He said: "Do you see the spirits

  Crowding the bright doorway?"

  He said: "Do you hear them whispering?"

  He said: "Do you catch what they say?"

  FIFTH PART

  THEN Joseph, grey with waiting,

  His dark eyes full of pain,

  Heard: "I have been to Patmos;

  Give me the child again."

  Now on with the hopeless journey

  Looking bleak ahead she rode,

  And the man and the child of no more account

  Than the earth the palfrey trode.

  Till a beggar spoke to Joseph,

  But looked into her eyes;

  So she turned, and said to her husband:

  "I give, whoever denies."

  SIXTH PART

  SHE gave on the open heather

  Beneath bare judgment stars,

  And she dreamed of her children and Joseph,

  And the isles, and her men, and her scars.

  And she woke to distil the berries

  The beggar had gathered at night,

  Whence he drew the curious liquors

  He held in delight.

  He gave her no crown of flowers,

  No child and no palfrey slow,

  Only led her through harsh, hard places

  Where strange winds blow.

  She follows his restless wanderings

  Till night when, by the fire's red stain,

  Her face is bent in the bitter steam

  That comes from the flowers of pain.

  Then merciless and ruthless

  He takes the flame-wild drops

  To the town, and tries to sell them

  With the market-crops.

  So she follows the cruel journey

  That ends not anywhere,

  And dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot,

  She is brewing hope from despair.

  TRIER

  _FIRST MORNING_

  THE night was a failure

  but why not--?

  In the darkness

  with the pale dawn seething at the window

  through the black frame

  I could not be free,

  not free myself from the past, those others--

  and our love was a confusion,

  there was a horror,

  you recoiled away from me.

  Now, in the morning

  As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little

  shrine,

  And look at the mountain-walls,

  Walls of blue shadow,

  And see so near at our feet in the meadow

  Myriads of dandelion pappus

  Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass

  Held still beneath the sunshine--

  It is enough, you are near--

  The mountains are balanced,

  The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the

  grass;

  You and I together

  We hold them proud and blithe

  On our love.

  They stand upright on our love,

  Everything starts from us,

  We are the source.

  BEUERBERG

  _"AND OH--

  THAT THE MAN I AM

  MIGHT CEASE TO BE--"_

  No, now I wish the sunshine would stop,

  and the white shining houses, and the gay red

  flowers on the balconies

  and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed

  out

  between two valves of darkness;

  the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with

  muffled sound

  obliterating everything.

  I wish that whatever props up the walls of light

  would fall, and darkness would come hurling

  heavily down,

  and it would be thick black dark for ever.

  Not sleep, which is grey with dreams,

  nor death, which quivers with birth,

  but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.

  What is sleep?

  It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill,

  but it does not alter me, nor help me.

  And death would ache still, I am sure;

  it would be lambent, uneasy.

  I wish it would be completely dark everywhere,

  inside me, and out, heavily dark

  utterly.

  WOLFRATSHAUSEN

  _SHE LOOKS BACK_

  THE pale bubbles

  The lovely pale-gold bubbles of the globe-flowers

  In a great swarm clotted and single

  Went rolling in the dusk towards the river