One of the earliest poems by DH Lawrence (1885–1930), appearing in his 1916 collection “loves"The Enkindled Spring" shows the young writer emerging from something like a traditional Georgian poet in the Lawrence we remember: the modernist, sex-driven author of novels like "Sons and Lovers," "The Rainbow" and "Lady El Chatterley's lover.
The poem is in quatrains in pentameter, rhymed father, and plays with the traditional tropes of spring. The season "bursts into bonfires," a torrent of images showing the world ablaze with green fire. Feeble poets who strive to be, say, a Walt Whitman surrogate, then describe themselves as bound to the glow of spring: a phallic tower of spring force, an yonic frenzy creating new life.
Lawrence is better than those easy self-congratulations. He knows how to turn an encounter into a mortifying self-reflection, as he does in “Snake(“I lost my chance with one of the lords / Of life. / And I have something to atone for: / A pettiness”) or the failed seduction poem “Piano”, which we offered as Poem of the Day last spring.
If the first stanza of "La primavera ignited" is about the amazing fire of spring, the second stanza moves to consider the speaker of the poem, as he notes his own amazement at "this conflagration." And the third verse becomes self-reflection, the It's me? of existential doubt, when the poet realizes that he is not the fire but part of the extinguished shadows that oscillate between the flames: “a shadow that has strayed, and has been lost”.
the lit spring
by DH Lawrence
This coming spring bursts into green bonfires,
Wild breath of emerald trees and bushes full of flames,
Flowering thorns raised in crowns of smoke among
Where the wood smokes and the reeds watery and flickering.
I am in awe of this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit in the soil of the earth, this glow
of growth, and sparks blowing in a wild whirl,
Faces of people crossing my gaze.
And I, what source of fire am I among
This spring-jumping combustion? my spirit is shaken
Like a slapped shadow in the crowd
Of flames, a shadow that has strayed and been lost.
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With "Poem of the Day," The New York Sun offers a daily serving of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, Associate Poetry Editor at The Sun. Tied to the day, the season, or simply individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past, along with the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The aim is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic to the soul.
Mr. Bottum is the author of eight books, including An Anxious Age and The Decline of the Novel. Director of Dakota State University's Institute for Classics, he has written more than 800 essays, poems, reviews, and short stories in publications from the Atlantic to the Washington Post. His poetry collections include The Fall & Other Poems and The Second Spring, and he received a 2019 Christopher Medal for his poetry in the year's best children's book. He lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
