Reproach

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



Had I but known yesterday,
Helen, you could discharge the ache
   Out of the cloud;  
Had I known yesterday you could take
The turgid electric ache away,
   Drink it up with your proud  
White body, as lovely white lightning  
Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,
I might have hated you, Helen.  

But since my limbs gushed full of fire,
Since from out of my blood and bone
   Poured a heavy flame
To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone
Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,
   You have no name.
Earth of my swaying atmosphere,
Substance of my inconstant breath,
I cannot but cleave to you.  
 
Since you have drunken up the drear
Painful electric storm, and death
   Is washed from the blue  
Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.  
You are strong and passive and beautiful,
I come like winds that uncertain hover;
   But you
Are the earth I hover over.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

47 sec read
74

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCBACXXX DEFEDFXGH DGHIIDHD
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 841
Words 157
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 9, 9, 8

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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