Listening

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



I listen to the stillness of you,
 My dear, among it all;  
I feel your silence touch my words as I talk,
 And take them in thrall.  
 
My words fly off a forge
 The length of a spark;  
I see the night-sky easily sip them  
 Up in the dark.  
 
The lark sings loud and glad,  
 Yet I am not loth
That silence should take the song and the bird
 And lose them both.  
 
A train goes roaring south,  
 The steam-flag flying;  
I see the stealthy shadow of silence
 Alongside going.  
 
And off the forge of the world,  
 Whirling in the draught of life,  
Go sparks of myriad people, filling
 The night with strife.
 
Yet they never change the darkness
 Or blench it with noise;  
Alone on the perfect silence  
 The stars are buoys.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
92

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXA XBXB XXXX XCDC XECE XXDX
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 711
Words 135
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 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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