The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence

Abstract

Mr Lawrence’s work is full of contradictions: he is both crude and subtle, rough and tender; but these opposing elements are welded into a whole by a vitality so great as to be always arresting; a burning aliveness which has something of the qualities of fire — wildness, remorselessness, and beauty. In the “Love Poems” he writes of love which is primitive, yet not wholly unsubtle: the man is the eternal pursuer, ardent, slightly brutal, yet sometimes overcome by a sudden diffidence, by a fleeting shock of tenderness; the woman is the snared animal, shrinking but not untamable. She is not the only victim, for the man suffers the pains of baulked and unappeased desires, because she is elusive, cold, and unable to give herself with generosity. Many of the poems are on this note: “Lilies in the Fire,” “Coldness in Love”, “Reminder”, “Return”, and “The Appeal” — these last two, exquisite little poems — and “Repulsed”, of which I give the last two verses:

The night is immense and awful, Helen, and I an insect small

In the fur of this hill, cling on to the fur of shaggy black heather,

A palpitant speck in the fur of the night and afraid of all,

Seeing the world and sky like creatures hostile together.

And I in the fur of the world, and you a pale fleck from the sky,

How we hate each other to-night, hate, you and I,

As the world of activity hates the dream that goes on on high,

As a man hates the dreaming woman he loves, but who will not reply.