T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
A Bad Beginning
By D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930)(From Look! We Have Come Through! 1918) |
THE YELLOW sun steps over the mountain-top | |
| And falters a few short steps across the lake— | |
| Are you awake? | |
| See, glittering on the milk-blue, morning lake | |
| They are laying the golden racing-track of the sun; | 5 |
| The day has begun. | |
| The sun is in my eyes, I must get up. | |
| I want to go, there’s a gold road blazes before | |
| My breast—which is so sore. | |
| What?—your throat is bruised, bruised with my kisses? | 10 |
| Ah, but if I am cruel what then are you? | |
| I am bruised right through. | |
| What if I love you!—This misery | |
| Of your dissatisfaction and misprision | |
| Stupefies me. | 15 |
| Ah yes, your open arms! Ah yes, ah yes, | |
| You would take me to your breast!—But no, | |
| You should come to mine, | |
| It were better so. | |
| Here I am—get up and come to me! | 20 |
| Not as a visitor either, nor a sweet | |
| And winsome child of innocence; nor | |
| As an insolent mistress telling my pulse’s beat. | |
| Come to me like a woman coming home | |
| To the man who is her husband, all the rest | 25 |
| Subordinate to this, that he and she | |
| Are joined together for ever, as is best. | |
| Behind me on the lake I hear the steamer drumming | |
| From Austria. There lies the world, and here | |
| Am I. Which way are you coming? | 30 |