Ballad of Another Ophelia

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



Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,
Lamps in a wash of rain!  
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,
Oh tears on the window pane!  
 
Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,
Full of disappointment and of rain,  
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples
Of autumn tell the withered tale again.  
 
All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,  
Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,
Cluck, my marigold bird, and again  
Cluck for your yellow darlings.  
 
For the grey rat found the gold thirteen  
Huddled away in the dark,  
Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,
Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.  
 
Once I had a lover bright like running water,  
Once his face was laughing like the sky;  
Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter  
On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I.
 
What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom?
What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?  
’Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom;
What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men!  
 
Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,
And her shift is lying white upon the floor,  
That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm,
Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.  
 
Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,  
Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!
And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,
Did you see the wicked sun that winked!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 16, 2023

1:21 min read
64

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CBCD DEDE FGFG HIHI JDJD JKXK CLCL
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,468
Words 273
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

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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