Death & Dying

Elegy

by D. H. Lawrence 1885–1930

From Look! We Have Come Through! (1917)

Death & DyingRelationships

The sun immense and rosy
Must have sunk and become extinct
The night you closed your eyes for ever against me.

Grey days, and wan, dree dawnings
Since then, with fritter of flowers--
Day wearies me with its ostentation and fawnings.

Still, you left me the nights,
The great dark glittery window,
The bubble hemming this empty existence with
lights.

Still in the vast hollow
Like a breath in a bubble spinning
Brushing the stars, goes my soul, that skims the
bounds like a swallow!

I can look through
The film of the bubble night, to where you are.
Through the film I can almost touch you.

✦ ✦ ✦

The sun must have sunk 'the night you closed your eyes for ever against me'. The mourner can look through 'the film of the bubble night' almost to touch the dead.

MLA

Lawrence, D. H. “Elegy.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/lawrence/32/.

Chicago

Lawrence, D. H. “Elegy.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/lawrence/32/.

Read this poem with the Codex →

More by D. H. Lawrence