A Bad Beginning

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



The yellow sun steps over the mountain-top
And falters a few short steps across the lake -
Are you awake?
  
See, glittering on the milk-blue, morning lake
They are laying the golden racing-track of the sun;
The day has begun.
  
The sun is in my eyes, I must get up.
I want to go, there's a gold road blazes before
My breast - which is so sore.
  
What? - your throat is bruised, bruised with my kisses?
Ah, but if I am cruel what then are you?
I am bruised right through.
  
What if I love you! - This misery
Of your dissatisfaction and misprision
Stupefies me.
  
Ah yes, your open arms! Ah yes, ah yes,
You would take me to your breast! - But no,
You should come to mine,
It were better so.
  
Here I am - get up and come to me!
Not as a visitor either, nor a sweet
And winsome child of innocence; nor
As an insolent mistress telling my pulse's beat.
  
Come to me like a woman coming home
To the man who is her husband, all the rest
Subordinate to this, that he and she
Are joined together for ever, as is best.
  
Behind me on the lake I hear the steamer drumming
From Austria. There lies the world, and here
Am I. Which way are you coming?
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 06, 2023

1:10 min read
44

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAA ABB XCC XDD EBE XFXF EGCG XHEH IXI
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,117
Words 233
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 3

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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