Look! We Have Come Through!

by D. H. Lawrence

HISTORY

THE listless beauty of the hour
When snow fell on the apple trees
And the wood-ash gathered in the fire
And we faced our first miseries.
Then the sweeping sunshine of noon
When the mountains like chariot cars
Were ranked to blue battle—and you and I
Counted our scars.
And then in a strange, grey hour
We lay mouth to mouth, with your face
Under mine like a star on the lake,
And I covered the earth, and all space.
The silent, drifting hours
Of morn after morn
And night drifting up to the night
Yet no pathway worn.
Your life, and mine, my love
Passing on and on, the hate
Fusing closer and closer with love
Till at length they mate.
THE CEARNE

SONG OF A MAN WHO HAS
COME THROUGH
NOT I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry
me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a
winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am
borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through
the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade
inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a
wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder,
we shall find the Hesperides.
Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.
What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

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ONE WOMAN TO ALL WOMEN

I DON'T care whether I am beautiful to you
You other women.
Nothing of me that you see is my own;
A man balances, bone unto bone
Balances, everything thrown
In the scale, you other women.
You may look and say to yourselves, I do
Not show like the rest.
My face may not please you, nor my stature; yet
if you knew
How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings
true
Like a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke
falls due,
You other women:
You would draw your mirror towards you, you
would wish
To be different.
There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and
him
Balanced in glorious equilibrium,
The swinging beauty of equilibrium,
You other women.
There's this other beauty, the way of the stars
You straggling women.
If you knew how I swerve in peace, in the equi-
poise
With the man, if you knew how my flesh enjoys
The swinging bliss no shattering ever destroys
You other women:
You would envy me, you would think me wonder-
ful
Beyond compare;
You would weep to be lapsing on such harmony
As carries me, you would wonder aloud that he
Who is so strange should correspond with me
Everywhere.
You see he is different, he is dangerous,
Without pity or love.
And yet how his separate being liberates me
And gives me peace! You cannot see
How the stars are moving in surety
Exquisite, high above.
We move without knowing, we sleep, and we
travel on,
You other women.
And this is beauty to me, to be lifted and gone
In a motion human inhuman, two and one
Encompassed, and many reduced to none,
You other women.
KENSINGTON

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