A Baby Running Barefoot

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



When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,  
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass  
Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.  
 
I long for the baby to wander hither to me  
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,  
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,  
Cool like syringa buds,  
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

35 sec read
374

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXBAXBX CBCXXX
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 611
Words 118
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 7, 6

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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