Amores by D.H. Lawrence

Amores by D.H. Lawrence

Though mostly known for his great novel Sons and Lovers in the literary world, DH Lawrence published a collection of poems this year called Amores. The poems are romantic and more in the tradition of the Romantic poets of the previous Gregorian era. Still, Lawrence’s free verse works at portraying what he thinks are “the unconscious” passions of humans through imagery and symbolism. Although Lawrence remains well-known mainly for his prose, his poetry, as essayist Sam Alexander says in his essay on Lawrence’s poetry “uses a rich and complex symbolic matrix to explore issues that would remain at the center of Lawrence’s work for the rest of his career.” Here's a poem from the collection Amores called Epilogue that I enjoyed.

Epilogue

PATIENCE, little Heart.

One day a heavy, June-hot woman

Will enter and shut the door to stay.

 And when your stifling heart would summon

Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay,

Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies

Flaming on after sunset,

Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of their hot twilight;

There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet

Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies

With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage,

When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage.

Patience, little Heart.