Excursion

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



I wonder, can the night go by;  
Can this shot arrow of travel fly  
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky  
   Of a dawned to-morrow,  
Without ever sleep delivering us
From each other, or loosing the dolorous  
   Unfruitful sorrow!  
 
What is it then that you can see  
That at the window endlessly  
You watch the red sparks whirl and flee
   And the night look through?  
Your presence peering lonelily there  
Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear  
   To share the train with you.  
 
You hurt my heart-beats’ privacy;
I wish I could put you away from me;  
I suffocate in this intimacy,  
   For all that I love you;  
How I have longed for this night in the train,
Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain
   To God to remove you.  
 
But surely my soul’s best dream is still
That one night pouring down shall swill
Us away in an utter sleep, until  
   We are one, smooth-rounded.
Yet closely bitten in to me  
Is this armour of stiff reluctancy  
   That keeps me impounded.  
 
So, dear love, when another night  
Pours on us, lift your fingers white
And strip me naked, touch me light,  
   Light, light all over.  
For I ache most earnestly for your touch,
Yet I cannot move, however much  
   I would be your lover.
 
Night after night with a blemish of day  
Unblown and unblossomed has withered away;
Come another night, come a new night, say  
   Will you pluck me apart?  
Will you open the amorous, aching bud
Of my body, and loose the burning flood  
   That would leap to you from my heart?

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:20 min read
64

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAABCCB DDDEFFE DDDEGGE HHHIDCX JJJKLLK MMMNIIN
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,481
Words 269
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7

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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