Silence

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



Since I lost you I am silence-haunted,
 Sounds wave their little wings  
A moment, then in weariness settle
 On the flood that soundless swings.
 
Whether the people in the street
 Like pattering ripples go by,  
Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs
 With a loud, hoarse sigh:  
 
Or the wind shakes a ravel of light
 Over the dead-black river,
Or night’s last echoing  
 Makes the daybreak shiver:  
 
I feel the silence waiting  
 To take them all up again  
In its vast completeness, enfolding
 The sound of men.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 26, 2023

26 sec read
96

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXA XBXB XCDC DEDE
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 509
Words 89
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 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…

All David Herbert Lawrence poems | David Herbert Lawrence Books

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