Explore "Debacle" by D.H. Lawrence on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE trees in trouble because of autumn, / And scarlet berries falling from the bush, / And all the myriad houseless seeds / Loosing hold in the wind's insistent push
Moan softly with autumnal parturition, / Poor, obscure fruits extruded out of light / Into the world of shadow, carried down / Between the bitter knees of the after-night.
Bushed in an uncouth ardour, coiled at core / With a knot of life that only bliss can unravel, / Fall all the fruits most bitterly into earth / Bitterly into corrosion bitterly travel.
What is it internecine that is locked, / By very fierceness into a quiescence / Within the rage? We shall not know till it burst / Out of corrosion into new florescence.
Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed / The spark intense within it, all without / Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard / For ruin on the naked small redoubt.
Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally; / To have the mystery, but not go forth; / To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save / The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from / the north.
The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder / the heart / That saves the blue grain of eternal fire / Within its quick, committed to hold and wait / And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire.