Explore "Sicilian Cyclamens (Flowers)" by D.H. Lawrence on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When he pushed his bush of black hair off his brow: / When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it in a knob behind / -- O act of fearful temerity! / When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven, their eyes revealed: / When they felt the light of heaven brandished like a knife at their defenceless eyes, / And the sea like a blade at their face, / Mediterranean savages: / When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from the shaggy undergrowth / of their own hair / For the first time, / They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growing / Where the slow toads sat brooding on the past.
Slow toads, and cyclamen leaves / Stickily glistening with eternal shadow / Keeping to earth. / Cyclamen leaves / Toad-filmy, earth-iridescent / Beautiful / Frost-filigreed / Spumed with mud / Snail-nacreous / Low down.