Tortoises

“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.””

— D. H. Lawrence

“Nobody knows you.You don't know yourself.And I, who am half in love with you,What am I in love with?My own imaginings?””

— D. H. Lawrence

“What is the knocking?What is the knocking at the door in the night?It is somebody who wants to do us harm.No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.””

— D. H. Lawrence

“And when the dawn comes creeping in,Cautiously I shall raiseMyself to watch the daylight win.””

— D. H. Lawrence

“Know Deeply, Know Thyself More Deeply"Go deeper than love, for the soul has greater depths,love is like the grass, but the heart is deep wild rockmolten, yet dense and permanent.Go down to your deep old heart, woman, and lose sight of yourself.And lose sight of me, the me whom you turbulently loved.Let us lose sight of ourselves, and break the mirrors.For the fierce curve of our lives is moving again to the depthsout of sight, in the deep dark living heart.But say, in the dark wild metal of your heartis there a gem, which came into being between us?is there a sapphire of mutual trust, a blue spark?Is there a ruby of fused being, mine and yours, an inward glint?If there is not, O then leave me, go away.For I cannot be bullied back into the appearances of love,any more than August can be bullied to look like March.Love out of season, especially at the end of the seasonis merely ridiculous.If you insist on it, I insist on departure.Have you no deep old heart of wild womanhoodself-forgetful, and gemmed with experience,and swinging in a strange union of powerwith the heart of the man you are supposed to have loved?If you have not, go away.If you can only sit with a mirror in your hand, an ageing womanposing on and on as a lover,in love with a self that now is shallow and withered,your own self–that has passed like a last summer’s flower–then go away–I do not want a woman whom age cannot wither.She is a made-up lie, a dyed immortelleof infinite staleness.””

— D. H. Lawrence

“You are the call and I am the answer, You are the wish, and I the fulfillment, You are the night, and I the day.What else? it is perfect enough. It is perfectly complete, You and I,What more⎼?Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!””

— D. H. Lawrence

“So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour Feeling your fingers go Like a rhythmic breeze Over my hair, and tracing my brows, Till I knew you not from a little wind:”

— D. H. Lawrence

“Delivered helpless and amazedFrom the womb of the All, I am waiting dazedFor memory to be erased.Then I shall know the ElysiumThat lies outside the monstrous wombOf time from out of which I come.””

— D. H. Lawrence

“When she rises in the morning I linger to watch her; She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window And the sunbeams catch her Glistening white on the shoulders, While down her sides the mellow Golden shadow glows as She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts Sway like full-blown yellow Gloire de Dijon roses. She drips herself with water, and her shoulders Glisten as silver, they crumple up Like wet and falling roses, and I listen For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals. In the window full of sunlight Concentrates her golden shadow Fold on fold, until it glows as Mellow as the glory roses.””

— D. H. Lawrence