A Young Wife

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



The pain of loving you
Is almost more than I can bear.
  
I walk in fear of you.
The darkness starts up where
You stand, and the night comes through
Your eyes when you look at me.
  
Ah never before did I see
The shadows that live in the sun!
  
Now every tall glad tree
Turns round its back to the sun
And looks down on the ground, to see
The shadow it used to shun.
  
At the foot of each glowing thing
A night lies looking up.
  
Oh, and I want to sing
And dance, but I can't lift up
My eyes from the shadows: dark
They lie spilt round the cup.
  
What is it? - Hark
The faint fine seethe in the air!
  
Like the seething sound in a shell!
It is death still seething where
The wild-flower shakes its bell
And the sky lark twinkles blue -
  
The pain of loving you
Is almost more than I can bear.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on May 01, 2023

51 sec read
38

Quick analysis:

Scheme AB abac cd cdcd ef efgf gb hbha AB
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 773
Words 170
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2

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…

All David Herbert Lawrence poems | David Herbert Lawrence Books

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