Amores Part 1

Amores.

by D. H. Lawrence.

TEASE

I WILL give you all my keys, You shall be my chatelaine, You shall enter as you please, As you please shall go again.

When I hear you jingling through All the chambers of my soul, How I sit and laugh at you In your vain housekeeping role.

Jealous of the smallest cover, Angry at the simplest door; Well, you anxious, inquisitive lover, Are you pleased with what's in store?

You have fingered all my treasures, Have you not, most curiously, Handled all my tools and measures And masculine machinery?

Over every single beauty You have had your little rapture; You have slain, as was your duty, Every sin-mouse you could capture.

Still you are not satisfied, Still you tremble faint reproach; Challenge me I keep aside Secrets that you may not broach.

Maybe yes, and maybe no, Maybe there _are_ secret places, Altars barbarous below, Elsewhere halls of high disgraces.

Maybe yes, and maybe no, You may have it as you please, Since I choose to keep you so, Suppliant on your curious knees.

THE WILD COMMON

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.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie Low-rounded on the mournful gra.s.s they have bitten down to the quick.

Are they asleep?--Are they alive?--Now see, when I Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes; There the lazy streamlet pushes Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip, Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook ebbing through so slow, Naked on the steep, soft lip Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro.

What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were lost?

Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook?

If my veins and my b.r.e.a.s.t.s with love embossed Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took.

So my soul like a pa.s.sionate woman turns, Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns, Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above.

Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air, Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.

And the soul of the wind and my blood compare Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.

Oh but the water loves me and folds me, Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood, Blood of a heaving woman who holds me, Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.

STUDY

SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbird Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel, Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back, Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll All be sweet with white and blue violet.

(_Hush now, hush. Where am I?--Biuret--_)

On the green wood's edge a shy girl hovers From out of the hazel-screen on to the gra.s.s, Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas!

Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool.

(_Work, work, you fool--!_)

Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads, And the red firelight steadily wheeling Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep.

And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing For the man to heed lest the girl shall weep.

(_Tears and dreams for them; for me Bitter science--the exams. are near.

I wish I bore it more patiently.

I wish you did not wait, my dear, For me to come: since work I must: Though it's all the same when we are dead.-- I wish I was only a bust, All head._)

DISCORD IN CHILDHOOD

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.

VIRGIN YOUTH

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a flush and a flame, Gathering the soft ripples below my b.r.e.a.s.t.s Into urgent, pa.s.sionate waves, And my soft, slumbering belly Quivering awake with one impulse of desire, Gathers itself fiercely together; And my docile, fluent arms Knotting themselves with wild strength To clasp what they have never clasped.

Then I tremble, and go trembling Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body, Till it has spent itself, And the relentless nodality of my eyes rea.s.serts itself, Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes, Back from my beautiful, lonely body Tired and unsatisfied.

MONOLOGUE OF A MOTHER

THIS is the last of all, this is the last!

I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire, I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross, Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past Fusing to one dead ma.s.s in the sinking fire Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.

Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a lover, Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free; White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas, Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats From place to place perpetually, seeking release From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

I must look away from him, for my faded eyes Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now, Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will, Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow, As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.

This is the last, it will not be any more.

All my life I have borne the burden of myself, All the long years of sitting in my husband's house, Never have I said to myself as he closed the door: "Now I am caught!--You are hopelessly lost, O Self, You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse."

Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.

It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!

Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected Another would take me,--and now, my son, O my son, I must sit awhile and wait, and never know The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me; For the lips and the eyes of G.o.d are behind a veil.

And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire, And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher,

IN A BOAT