T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Wedlock
By D. H. Lawrence (18851930)(From Look! We Have Come Through! 1918) COME, my little one, closer up against me,I | |
Creep right up, with your round head pushed in my breast. | |
How I love all of you! Do you feel me wrap you | |
Up with myself and my warmth, like a flame round the wick? | |
And how I am not at all, except a flame that mounts off you. | 5 |
Where I touch you, I flame into being;—but is it me, or you? | |
That round head pushed in my chest, like a nut in its socket, | |
And I the swift bracts that sheathe it: those breasts, those thighs and knees, | |
Those shoulders so warm and smooth: I feel that I | |
Am a sunlight upon them, that shines them into being. | 10 |
But how lovely to be you! Creep closer in, that I am more. | |
I spread over you! How lovely, your round head, your arms, | |
Your breasts, your knees and feet! I feel that we | |
Are a bonfire of oneness, me flame flung leaping round you, | |
You the core of the fire, crept into me. | 15 |
II AND oh, my little one, you whom I enfold, | |
How quaveringly I depend on you, to keep me alive, | |
Like a flame on a wick! | |
I, the man who enfolds you and holds you close, | |
How my soul cleaves to your bosom as I clasp you, | 20 |
The very quick of my being! | |
Suppose you didn’t want me! I should sink down | |
Like a light that has no sustenance | |
And sinks low. | |
Cherish me, my tiny one, cherish me who enfold you. | 25 |
Nourish me, and endue me, I am only of you, | |
I am your issue. | |
How full and big like a robust, happy flame | |
When I enfold you, and you creep into me, | |
And my life is fierce at its quick | 30 |
Where it comes off you! | |
III MY little one, my big one, | |
My bird, my brown sparrow in my breast. | |
My squirrel clutching in to me; | |
My pigeon, my little one, so warm | 35 |
5o close, breathing so still. | |
My little one, my big one, | |
I, who am so fierce and strong, enfolding you, | |
If you start away from my breast, and leave me, | |
How suddenly I shall go down into nothing | 40 |
Like a flame that falls of a sudden. | |
And you will be before me, tall and towering, | |
And I shall be wavering uncertain | |
Like a sunken flame that grasps for support. | |
IV BUT now I am full and strong and certain | 45 |
With you there firm at the core of me | |
Keeping me. | |
How sure I feel, how warm and strong and happy | |
For the future! How sure the future is within me; | |
I am like a seed with a perfect flower enclosed. | 50 |
I wonder what it will be, | |
What will come forth of us. | |
What flower, my love? | |
No matter, I am so happy, | |
I feel like a firm, rich, healthy root, | 55 |
Rejoicing in what is to come. | |
How I depend on you utterly | |
My little one, my big one! | |
How everything that will be, will not be of me, | |
Nor of either of us, | 60 |
But of both of us. | |
V AND think, there will something come forth from us. | |
We two, folded so small together, | |
There will something come forth from us. | |
Children, acts, utterance | 65 |
Perhaps only happiness. | |
Perhaps only happiness will come forth from us. | |
Old sorrow, and new happiness. | |
Only that one newness. | |
But that is all I want. | 70 |
And I am sure of that. | |
We are sure of that. | |