A Baby Asleep after Pain

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



As a drenched, drowned bee  
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,  
 So clings to me  
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears  
 And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm  
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.  
 My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,  
Like a burden she hangs on me.  
 She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain  
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,  
 Reaching downwards;  
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee  
 Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 27, 2023

30 sec read
320

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABACDEFGAHIAJAK
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 558
Words 103
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 15

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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