EXCURSION
by: D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
- 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?
"Excursion" is reprinted
from Amores: Poems. D.H. Lawrence. New York: B.W. Huebsch,
1916. |
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POEMS BY D.H. LAWRENCE |
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