‘Shadows’ by D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created. 4

And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon     
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon’s in shadow.

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   12
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  16
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 drenched
with the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal.  20

And if, in the changing phases of man’s life 
I fall in sickness and in misery
my wrists seem broken and my heart seems dead
and strength is gone, and my life
is only the leavings of a life:     25

and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and snatches of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new blossoms of me

then I must know that still   29
I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man    32

Considering the Poem

We experience time here in two different ways: as a line we live along passing from past to future and as the numerous repeating cycles that time seems to include – the dying and renewal of the seasons, the repeated changes of the moon and tides, the round of days and nights that structures our lives. Time, in both its linear and cyclical appearances, is the preoccupation of this poem. This is a serious subject, of course, but Lawrence speaks to us, the readers, in a familiar and conversational tone, making us at ease with the profound and sometimes dark (or shadowy) subject.

He speaks candidly to us about himself. The development of the poem follows an exploratory train of thought, moving naturally and organically from one aspect of the subject to another, so representing the common process of open thinking that we all use as our minds explore, consider and reflect. Lawrence does not superimpose any formal shape on the subject matter – the poem is not a sonnet or in any other bought-in form. Suitably for the kind of relationship he wants to make with us, it’s free verse.

But, like the best free-verse, it is very highly organised. It may feel intuitive and spontaneous as we read, but when you stand back from it and look around, you start to notice the way Lawrence is organising his ideas and feelings. The whole poem is built up from the repetition of ‘And if … then’ structures: five of the seven verses begin with the words ‘And if’ (or ‘and’); two of the verses begin with the words ‘then I’.

In fact, the seven verses are in two sets built up on this simple structuring device: the first four verses end with a ‘then’ verse that gives a conclusion (like the conclusion of a conditional argument) to the hypothetical ‘if’ verses that precede it; the last three verses repeat the ‘if-then’ structure, but this time concentrating on the ‘phases of man’s life’ (21) and taking us to the climax of renewal that ends the poem.

The first three verses move our attention to longer and longer periods of time, beginning with the daily change from night to morning, then with weeks, then with seasonal change.

The subject becomes darker as we move through these ‘And-if’ verses: the daily ‘good oblivion’ (2) of sleep has dipped the speaker in God, and he has been recreated; then, in the following verse, the cycle of weeks brings gloom, shadows, and ‘the dark of the moon’ (5), but still Lawrence is ‘close together’ (9) with God who accompanies him in this period of lassitude and weariness. Then, in the long third verse, the pain increases: ‘trouble and dissolution and distress’ (12) come with the deepening darkness of autumn. There is no mention of God here but there is a counter-movement towards recovery as the year turns around the fulcrum of the winter solstice. The nightingale sings again and, with the song, comes an enlivening in the musical qualities of the verse itself; it’s really worth reading it aloud to hear the patterning of /d/ and, especially, /s/ sounds that bring into the verse the beauty of sound to which the verse itself refers. We end this first part of the poem (as we’ll end the concluding part) with the cyclical idea of ‘renewal’ (20).

The final three verses are a repetition of the main ideas that have already been stated in the poem but there’s a variation. Lawrence wants us to look at life’s change and flux at a more general level. There are no more frequently used words in the poem than the words ‘I’ and ‘my’ but at this point Lawrence reminds us that he is not talking just about himself but is using his own experience as an example of everyone’s experience of time’s alterations, of ‘the changing phases’ of all lives. Still, the process in the verse is the same: we are guided from a stark awareness of a phase of suffering (22 -25) to a following phase of renewal that arrives, at first, in ‘snatches’ (26) which Lawrence, taking us back to the floral imagery of the opening verse, identifies with the sudden life of early spring, its blossoms and its fresh flowers.

In the poem as a whole, therefore, pertinently titled ‘Shadows’, the contrast of dark and light, of despair and renewal, seems to be embedded in a cyclical process of time.

It does, however, also seem to have a line of progressive development that is signalled in the four uses of the word ‘oblivion’ (2, 20, 26, and 31). The first two uses of the word (2, 20) are to do with unconsciousness. The last two appearances of the word (26, 31), in the second part of the poem, upturn the normal usage and associate the word with insightful, mystical knowing, the use in the final verse indicating a metaphysical state of mind where God and man meet. The poem has a growing confidence in the presence of a God who, though described as ‘unknown’ (30) by Lawrence because known only indirectly, is seen to be active in the changes and chances of our life as human beings.