The Wild Common | British Literature Wiki

The Wild CommonBy D.H. Lawrence
The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep?–Are they alive?–Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook ebbing through so slow,
Naked on the steep, soft lip
Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro.

What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were lost?
Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook?
If my veins and my breasts with love embossed
Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took.

So my soul like a passionate woman turns,
Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love
For myself in my own eyes’ laughter burns,
Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above.

Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.
And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.

Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood,
Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.

Summary:
This poem speaks of many different elements. There is the presence of nature in the beginning, describing the scene for us in the dense evergreen. The narrator is calmly observing the nature around him. Noticing the stillness of the rabbits and the surging water that separates the earth and cascading into other lands. It is very fluid like and descriptive.
The poem then seems to alter it’s point elsewhere, by asking where will the marigolds bloom without the pulsing waters? Without answering these questions, the narrator turns to the subject matter of the poem. “So my soul like a passionate woman turns/ Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned/ and her love/ For myself in my own eyes’ laughter burns/” essentially stating that the narrator is basically finding solace with nature and the beauty in the wild. Clearly the narrator has been scorned at some point by a woman and seeks peace in the woods.

The wind seems to console with the narrator “the soul of the wind and my blood compare”, “and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.” The different elements in nature seem to match one aspect of the narrator’s current feeling. The wind feels the narrator’s pain while the water offers comfort and love. “Oh, but the water loves me and folds me/Plays with me, sways with me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood.”

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