In The Dark

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Title:     In The Dark
Author: D. H. Lawrence [More Titles by Lawrence]

A BLOTCH of pallor stirs beneath the high
Square picture-dusk, the window of dark sky.

A sound subdued in the darkness: tears!
As if a bird in difficulty up the valley steers.

"Why have you gone to the window? Why don't you sleep?
How you have wakened me! But why, why do you weep?"

_"I am afraid of you, I am afraid, afraid!
There is something in you destroys me--!"_

"You have dreamed and are not awake, come here to me."
_"No, I have wakened. It is you, you are cruel to me!"_

"My dear!"--_"Yes, yes, you are cruel to me. You cast
A shadow over my breasts that will kill me at last."_

"Come!"--_"No, I'm a thing of life. I give
You armfuls of sunshine, and you won't let me live."_

"Nay, I'm too sleepy!"--_"Ah, you are horrible;
You stand before me like ghosts, like a darkness upright."_

"I!"--_"How can you treat me so, and love me?
My feet have no hold, you take the sky from above me."_

"My dear, the night is soft and eternal, no doubt
You love it!"--_"It is dark, it kills me, I am put out."_

"My dear, when you cross the street in the sunshine, surely
Your own small night goes with you. Why treat it so poorly?"

_"No, no, I dance in the sun, I'm a thing of life--"_
"Even then it is dark behind you. Turn round, my wife."

_"No, how cruel you are, you people the sunshine
With shadows!"_--"With yours I people the sunshine, yours and mine--"

"In the darkness we all are gone, we are gone with the trees
And the restless river;--we are lost and gone with all these."

_"But I am myself, I have nothing to do with these."_
"Come back to bed, let us sleep on our mysteries.

"Come to me here, and lay your body by mine,
And I will be all the shadow, you the shine.

"Come, you are cold, the night has frightened you.
Hark at the river! It pants as it hurries through

"The pine-woods. How I love them so, in their mystery of not-to-be."
_"--But let me be myself, not a river or a tree."_

"Kiss me! How cold you are!--Your little breasts
Are bubbles of ice. Kiss me!--You know how it rests

"One to be quenched, to be given up, to be gone in the dark;
To be blown out, to let night dowse the spark.

"But never mind, my love. Nothing matters, save sleep;
Save you, and me, and sleep; all the rest will keep."

[The end]
D. H. Lawrence's poem: In The Dark

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