Shadows by DH Lawrence

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

And if, as autumn deepens and darkens
I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms
and trouble and dissolution and distress
and then the softness of deep shadows folding,
folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips
so sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song
singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice
and the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow,
then I shall know that my life is moving still
with the dark earth, and drenched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches
of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still
I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man.

To my mind DH Lawrence's "Shadows" and Thomas' "Poem on His Birthday" are so alike in spirit and message that they seem companion poems. Lawrence preceded Thomas by some decades, of course, and his vision of afterlife is more idiosyncratic, but would you be surprised to read that wonderful line of Thomas', "Dark is a way and light is a place," in the clear, solemn stanzas of "Shadows?" Dark is the way:

And if, in the changing phases of a man's life
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life...

"My wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead": I do not know what it is to be on one's deathbed, but that seems more accurate and more vivid than anything I might imagine. If you put an infinite number of emo bands in a room with typewriters, would they ever write a phrase so heart-rending?

But light, that place, greets us as the poem begins:

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

Lawrence, like Thomas and Clare, yearns for communion with God, and yet here is much more: here is a resurrection in God, and a sort of transformation toward divinity. I love "Shadows" because it uses such simple autumn imagery to describe this process, a trope so well-worn it is beyond cliche. Echoes here, too, of Macbeth, who says, "My way of life has fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf..."

And yet the simplest images have the most power, when they are done so well. Thomas' poetry suffers from its labyrinthine qualities; at times it is as much a mystery as the "brambled void" itself. Lawrence's clarity is, by contrast, shattering. As Thomas writes of the souls like "blackberries in the woods," Lawrence too gives us images of plants, grown from the soil where dead things are, not fruit this time but flowers:

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me...

I love that. Oblivion is "lovely," lovely because it belongs to God, and is his medium for the creation of a new spirit. Oblivion is not oblivion; it is something Lawrence tells us that we must pass through to emerge, new, from the other side.