D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930). Amores. 1916.

6. Monologue of a Mother

THIS is the last of all, this is the last!

I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,

I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,

Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past

Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire

Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.

Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a loyer,

Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting

The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;

White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover

Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting

The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,

Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing

Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats

From place to place perpetually, seeking release

From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing

His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

I must look away from him, for my faded eyes

Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,

Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,

Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies

In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,

As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.

This is the last, it will not be any more.

All my life I have borne the burden of myself,

All the long years of sitting in my husband’s house,

Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:

“Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O Self,

You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.”

Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.

It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!

Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago

The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected

Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,

I must sit awhile and wait, and never know

The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me:

For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.

And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me

With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,

And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher.