Selected D.H. Lawrence Poems

The Mosquito Knows

The mosquito knows full well, small as he is

he's a beast of prey.

But after all

he only takes his bellyful.

he doesn't take my blood in the bank.

A Sane Revolution

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.

Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.

Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.

Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.

Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!

 

What would you fight for?

I am not sure I would always fight for my life.
Life might not be worth fighting for.

I am not sure I would always fight for my wife.
A wife isn't always worth fighting for.

Nor my children, nor my country, nor my fellow-men.
It all depends whether I found them worth fighting for.

The only thing men invariably fight for
Is their money. But I doubt if I'd fight for mine, anyhow
not to shed a lot of blood over it.

Yet one thing I do fight for, tooth and nail, all the time.
And that is my bit of inward peace, where I am at one
with myself.

And I must say, I am often worsted.

 

To Women, As Far As I'm Concerned
　　 　　
The feelings I don't have I don't have.

The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have.
The felings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we

neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty
sure they haven't got them
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all
you'd better abandon all idea of feelings altogether.

 

Self Pity

I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for itself.

 

 

Wild Things in Captivity

Wild things in captivitywhile they keep their own wild puritywon't breed, they mope, they die.All men are in captivity,active with captive activity,and the best won't breed, though they don't know why.The great cage of our domesticitykills sex in a man, the simplicityof desire is distorted and twisted awry.And so, with bitter perversity,gritting against the great adversity,they young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry.Sex is a state of grace.In a cage it can't take place.Break the cage then, start in and try.