D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930). Amores. 1916.

49. Mating

ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind,

The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,

And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,

The wild anemones lie

In undulating shivers beneath the wind.

Over the blue of the waters ply

White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;

And, look you, floating just thereby,

The blue-gleamed drake stems proud

Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.

In the lustrous gleam of the water, there

Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,

Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share

The darkness that interweaves

The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.

Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts

Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see

A great bay stallion dances, skirts

The bushes sumptuously,

Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.

Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,

What sudden expectation opens you

So wide as you watch the catkins blow

Their dust from the birch on the blue

Lift of the pulsing wind—ah, tell me you know!

Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun

A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all

Us creatures, people and flowers undone,

Lying open under his thrall,

As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun?

Why, I should think that from the earth there fly

Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams

Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high

Bursting globe of dreams,

To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.

Do you not hear each morsel thrill

With joy at travelling to plant itself within

The expectant one, therein to instil

New rapture, new shape to win,

From the thick of life wake up another will?

Surely, and if that I would spill

The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,

From off my brimming measure, to fill

You, and flush you rife

With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?