David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)
Worm Either Way
1If you live along with all the other people
2and are just like them, and conform, and are nice
3you're just a worm --
4and if you live with all the other people
5and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform
6then you're just the worm that has turned,
7in either case, a worm.
8The conforming worm stays just inside the skin
9respectably unseen, and cheerfully gnaws away at the heart of life,
10making it all rotten inside.
11The unconforming worm -- that is, the worm that has turned --
12gnaws just the same, gnawing the substance out of life,
13but he insists on gnawing a little hole in the social epidermis
14and poking his head out and waving himself
15and saying: Look at me, I am not respectable,
16I do all the things the bourgeois daren't do,
17I booze and fornicate and use foul language and despise your honest man.--
18But why should the worm that has turned protest so much?
19The bonnie bonnie bourgeois goes a-whoring up back streets just the same.
20The busy busy bourgeois imbibes his little share
21just the same
22if not more.
23The pretty pretty bourgeois pinks his language just as pink
24if not pinker,
25and in private boasts his exploits even louder, if you ask me,
26than the other.
27While as to honesty, Oh look where the money lies!
28So I can't see where the worm that has turned puts anything over
29the worm that is too cunning to turn.
30On the contrary, he merely gives himself away.
31The turned worm shouts. I bravely booze!
32the other says. Have one with me!
33The turned worm boasts: I copulate!
34the unturned says: You look it.
35You're a d----- b----- b----- p----- bb-----, says the worm that's turned.
36Quite! says the other. Cuckoo!
Notes
13] epidermis: outermost skin.
23] pinks: pretties up (OED, "pink," v. 4).
36] Cuckoo!: "crazy!" or perhaps "and so on, ad nauseum!" (OED "cuckoo," v. sense 2).
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, Pansies: Poems (London: Martin Secker, 1929): 22-23. PR 6023 A93P3 1929 Robarts Library
First publication date:
1929
Publication date note: See Roberts A47
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 2000.
Recent editing: 4:2002/1/12
Composition date:
17
November
1928
-
24
November
1928
Composition date note: See Ellis, 584
Form: Free Verse
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