Sons and Lovers / D. H. Lawrence

Title: Sons and Lovers 
Author: David Herbert Lawrence 

Introduction: John Macy

Subjects: Autobiography; Classic; Fiction

It is regarded as a masterpiece by many critics and Lawrence's finest achievement. Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

Winter in the Boulevard / D.H. Lawrence

The frost has settled down upon the trees 

And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies 

Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old 

Romantic stories now no more to be told. 

Week-night Service / D.H. Lawrence

The five old bells 

Are hurrying and eagerly calling, 

Imploring, protesting 

They know, but clamorously falling 

Into gabbling incoherence, never resting, 

Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping 

In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping. 

Virgin Youth / D.H. Lawrence

Now and again 

All my body springs alive, 

And the life that is polarised in my eyes, 

That quivers between my eyes and mouth, 

Flies like a wild thing across my body, 

Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous, 

Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame, 

Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts 

Into urgent, passionate waves, 

Under the Oak / D.H. Lawrence

You, if you were sensible, 

When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful, 

You would not turn and answer me 

"The night is wonderful." 

Two-Fold / D.H. Lawrence

How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur cleaving 

All with a flash of blue!--when will she be leaving 

Her room, where the night still hangs like a half-folded bat, 

And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like must in a vat.

Two Wives / D.H. Lawrence

I.

Into the shadow-white chamber silts the white 

Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night 

Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts 

A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear, 

Till petals heaped between the window-shafts 

In a drift die there. 

Twenty Years Ago / D.H. Lawrence

Round the house were lilacs and strawberries 

And foal-foots spangling the paths, 

And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries 

Caught dust from the sea's long swaths. 

Troth with the Dead / D.H. Lawrence

The moon is broken in twain, and half a moon 

Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky; 

The other half of the broken coin of troth 

Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie. 

They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away; 

I had pushed it gently in among the thick of her hair 

Where it gathered towards the plait, on that very last day; 

And like a moon in secret it is shining there. 

Tortoise Shout / D.H. Lawrence

I thought he was dumb,

I said he was dumb,

Yet I've heard him cry.

First faint scream,

Out of life's unfathomable dawn,

Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's

dawning rim,

Far, far off, far scream.

Thief in the Night / Poem

Last night a thief came to me 

And struck at me with something dark. 

I cried, but no one could hear me, 

I lay dumb and stark. 

The Wild Common / D.H. Lawrence

The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, 

Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; 

Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping: 

They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim. 

The Virgin Mother / D.H. Lawrence

My little love, my darling, 

You were a doorway to me; 

You let me out of the confines 

Into this strange countrie, 

Where people are crowded like thistles, 

Yet are shapely and comely to see. 

The Punisher / D.H. Lawrence

I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells, 

Scooped them up with small, iron words, 

Dripping over the runnels. 

The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still 

I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys 

Glitter and spill. 

The Prophet / D.H. Lawrence

Ah, my darling, when over the purple horizon shall loom 

The shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide their faces, 

Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreant groom, 

Wounding themselves against her, denying her fecund embraces.

The North Country / D.H. Lawrence

In another country, black poplars shake themselves over a pond, 

And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and wheel from the works beyond; 

The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the grass is a darker green, 

And people darkly invested with purple move palpable through the scene. 

The Mystic Blue / D.H. Lawrence

Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping, 

Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping 

To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping. 

Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel 

Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel 

Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel. 

The Mowers / D.H. Lawrence

There's four men mowing down by the river;

I can hear the sound of the scythe strokes, four

Sharp breaths swishing:—yea, but I

Am sorry for what's i' store.

The Inheritance / D.H. Lawrence

Since you did depart 

Out of my reach, my darling, 

Into the hidden, 

I see each shadow start 

With recognition, and I 

Am wonder-ridden. 

The Hands of the Betrothed / D.H. Lawrence

Her tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness, 

Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty; 

Yea, and her mouth's prudent and crude caress 

Means even less than her many words to me.