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 dreanched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.
—D. H. Lawrence, second strophe of “Shadows” from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. de Sola Pinto & F. W. Roberts (Viking Penguin, 1964, 1971)
