Two Poems by D.H. Lawrence

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pajamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher

And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was

At the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,

Over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently. 

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting. 

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips,

And mused a moment,

And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels

Of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent,

The gold are venomous. 

And voices in me said, if you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. 

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet,

To drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth.

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity that I longed to talk to him?     

Was it humility, to feel so honored?
I felt so honored.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

But even so, honored still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth. 

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice a dream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face. 

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,

And entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing

Into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly

Drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned. 

I looked around, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter. 

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed

In undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination. 

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. 

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake. 

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again. 

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness. 

Taormina, 1923

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me,
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me; my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance; I weep like a child for the past.

Books of Poetry by D.H. Lawrence: Love Poems and Others (1913); Amores (1916); Look! We Have Come Through (1917); New Poems (1918); Bay (1919); Tortoises (1921); Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923); Pansies (1929). Books Published Posthumously:  Nettles (1930), Last Poems (1932), Collected Poems (1932), The Ship of Death (1933), Poems (1939), Fire and Other Poems (1940), Complete Poems (1957), Collected Poems (1964). Lawrence also wrote a dozen novels: Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, to name just a few. He wrote plays, letters, essays, literary criticisms and three volumes of short stories. He was a painter as well. 

D.H. Lawrence (September 11, 1885 - March 2, 1930)