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

5. Virgin Youth

NOW and again

All my body springs alive,

And the life that is polarised in my eyes,

That quivers between my eyes and mouth,

Flies like a wild thing across my body,

Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous,

Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,

Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts

Into urgent, passionate waves,

And my soft, slumbering belly

Quivering awake with one impulse of desire,

Gathers itself fiercely together;

And my docile, fluent arms

Knotting themselves with wild strength

To clasp—what they have never clasped.

Then I tremble, and go trembling

Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body,

Till it has spent itself,

And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,

Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,

Back from my beautiful, lonely body

Tired and unsatisfied.