Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

58. Grey Evening

WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you

My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?

My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,

And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped

Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields

Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped

And garnered that the golden daylight yields.

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among

The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,

As farther off the scythe of night is swung,

And little stars come rolling from their husk.

And all the earth is gone into a dust

Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,

Covered with aged lichens, past with must,

And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

And so I sit and scan the book of grey,

Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,

All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding

With wounds of sunset and the dying day.