RPO -- David Herbert Lawrence : Gloire de Dijon

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)

Gloire de Dijon

1When she rises in the morning

2I linger to watch her;

3She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window

4And the sunbeams catch her

5Glistening white on the shoulders,

6While down her sides the mellow

7Golden shadow glows as

8She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts

9Sway like full-blown yellow

10Gloire de Dijon roses.

11She drips herself with water, and her shoulders

12Glisten as silver, they crumple up

13Like wet and falling roses, and I listen

14For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.

15In the window full of sunlight

16Concentrates her golden shadow

17Fold on fold, until it glows as

18Mellow as the glory roses.

ICKING

Notes

1] Title: "glory of Dijon" (from the name of a town in France where it was developed in 1853), a yellow hybrid tea rose (OED, which cites another use by Lawrence in Lady Chatterley's Lover [1928]).
Gilbert suggests that Lawrence writes this poem about Frieda his beloved (102).

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: D. H. Lawrence, Look! We Have Come Through! (London: Chatto and Windus, 1917): 56. PR 6023 A93 L6 Robarts Library. Roberts A10.
First publication date: January 1914
Publication date note: Poetry (Jan. 1914)
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 2000.
Recent editing: 4:2001/12/28*1:2005/2/27

Composition date: June 1912 - August 1912
Composition date note: See Kinkead-Weekes, 741, 768, n. 60
Rhyme: abcbdefgef dhijkcff

Other poems by David Herbert Lawrence