honoured. And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black; Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
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228 0 / D. H. LAWRENCE
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid
black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him; But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste, Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination. And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross,1 And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate; A pettiness.
1923
Cypresses1
Tuscan cypresses, What is it?
Folded in like a dark thought, For which the language is lost, Tuscan cypresses, Is there a great secret? Are our words no good?
The undeliverable secret, Dead with a dead race and a dead speech, and yet Darkly monumental in you, Etruscan cypresses.
1. In Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. i. Tall dark coniferous evergreen trees, associated
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CYPRESSES / 2281
Ah, how I admire your fidelity, Dark cypresses!
Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?2 The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans, Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?
Among the sinuous, flame-tall cypresses That swayed their length of darkness all around Etruscan-dusky, wavering men of old Etruria: Naked except for fanciful long shoes, Going with insidious, half-smiling quietness And some of Africa's imperturbable sang-froid3 About a forgotten business.
What business, then? Nay, tongues are dead, and words are hollow as hollow seed-pods, Having shed their sound and finished all their echoing Etruscan syllables, That had the telling.
Yet more I see you darkly concentrate, Tuscan cypresses, On one old thought: On one old slim imperishable thought, while you remain Etruscan cypresses; Dusky, slim marrow-thought of slender, flickering men of Etruria, Whom Rome called vicious.
Vicious, dark cypresses: Vicious, you supple, brooding, softly-swaying pillars of dark flame. Monumental to a dead, dead race Embowered in you!
Were they then vicious, the slender, tender-footed Long-nosed men of Etruria? Or was their way only evasive and different, dark, like cypress-trees in a
wind?
They are dead, with all their vices, And all that is left Is the shadowy monomania of some cypresses And tombs.
The smile, the subtle Etruscan smile still lurking Within the tombs, Etruscan cypresses.
He laughs longest who laughs last;0 (proverbial) Nay, Leonardo4 only bungled the pure Etruscan smile.
2. The most important of the pre-Roman inhabi-4. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter tants of Italy. whose portrait known as the Mona Lisa or La Gio3. Cold blood (French, literal trans.); here calm conda has a famous mysterious smile. detachment.
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228 2 / D. H. LAWRENCE
What would I not give To bring back the rare and orchid-like Evil-yclept? Etruscan? -called (archaic) For as to the evil We have only Roman word for it, Which I, being a little weary of Roman virtue, Don't hang much weight
