Analysis of We are Transmitters

David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)



As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.

That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.

And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.

Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.

Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn't mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it's only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.


Scheme AX XB XCX DBDXX XACXXX
Poetic Form
Metre 1111101011 01111011111111 1111010011110110 10100110 011111101101101 1111100111101110 011011101 10111010101101010101 1110101011010 1101 101010111100010 10101 1011110101 1101011 110111110 1101101111111100101111 1110011001111 101110001010110100
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 875
Words 175
Sentences 11
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 2, 2, 3, 5, 6
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 38
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 136
Words per stanza (avg) 35
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 20, 2023

53 sec read
61

David Herbert Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. Lawrence's writing explores issues such as sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the literary critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness. more…

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