A Love Song

D. H. Lawrence's A Love Song

Introduction

D.H. Lawrence's "A Love Song" is a poignant exploration of memory, absence, and desire, crafted with the author's characteristic intensity and sensual imagery. This sonnet sequence, comprising four quatrains and a final cinquain, delves into the complex emotions of a speaker grappling with the physical absence of their beloved while being haunted by their persistent presence in memory and desire. Through a careful analysis of the poem's structure, imagery, and thematic elements, we can uncover the layers of meaning and the profound emotional landscape that Lawrence has woven into this deceptively simple "love song."

Structure and Form

The poem's structure is noteworthy for its deviation from traditional sonnet forms. While it maintains the quatrain structure common to Shakespearean sonnets for the first four stanzas, it concludes with a five-line stanza, creating a sense of expansion or overflow that mirrors the poem's emotional crescendo. This structural choice reflects Lawrence's modernist tendencies, breaking from convention to better express the complex, often contradictory nature of human emotions.

The rhyme scheme (ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ) provides a sense of continuity and musical quality throughout the poem, reinforcing its title as a "song." However, the final stanza's additional line disrupts this pattern, emphasizing the speaker's emotional turmoil and the inability of conventional forms to fully contain the depth of their feelings.

Imagery and Symbolism

Lawrence's mastery of imagery is on full display in "A Love Song," with each stanza presenting vivid, often sensual pictures that serve as metaphors for the speaker's emotional state. The apple-blossom opening "wide / Under the pallid moonlight's fingering" in the second stanza is particularly evocative, suggesting both vulnerability and sensuality. This image of natural beauty and fecundity contrasts sharply with the speaker's "blanched face," highlighting the tension between the vitality of memory and the pallor of present loneliness.

The moon recurs as a symbol throughout the poem, its presence both illuminating and intrusive. In the third stanza, the moon "Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw / Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon," personifying it as a figure of desire and consumption. This anthropomorphization of the moon creates a sense of voyeurism, as if the natural world itself is partaking in a sensual exchange from which the speaker feels excluded.

The repeated imagery of the breast – first as a place where the beloved's face is remembered, then as "aching" and "anguished, avid" – traces the trajectory of the speaker's emotions from tender remembrance to physical longing. This corporeal focus is characteristic of Lawrence's work, grounding abstract emotions in the visceral reality of the body.

Themes of Memory and Forgetfulness

The poem opens with a paradox: "Reject me not if I should say to you / I do forget the sounding of your voice." This immediate juxtaposition of rejection and forgetfulness sets up one of the poem's central tensions – the struggle between the desire to remember and the pain that remembrance brings. The speaker's claim to forget is quickly belied by the vivid recollections that follow, suggesting that this "forgetting" is perhaps more wishful thinking than reality.

This theme of contested memory continues throughout the poem, with each stanza presenting a new facet of remembrance. The second stanza's shift from forgetting to seeing "your blanched face at my breast" demonstrates how memory can intrude unbidden, disrupting the speaker's attempts at "diligent work." This involuntary remembering is portrayed as both a comfort and a distraction, highlighting the complex relationship between memory and present reality.

The Dialectic of Presence and Absence

Lawrence masterfully explores the paradoxical nature of absence, where the beloved is simultaneously not there and overwhelmingly present in the speaker's consciousness. This dialectic is particularly evident in the contrast between the physical absence described in the opening stanzas and the intense physical and emotional presence evoked in the final stanzas.

The poem's progression from day to night mirrors this movement from absence to presence. As the external world darkens – symbolized by the drawing of the blind – the internal landscape of memory and desire becomes more vivid. This interplay between exterior and interior realities is a hallmark of Lawrence's psychological acuity, demonstrating how the absence of the beloved in the physical world can lead to an intensification of their presence in the emotional and imaginative realms.

The Body as Site of Memory and Desire

Lawrence's focus on the body as the locus of emotional and sensual experience is evident throughout "A Love Song." The physical actions described – hiding eyes, drawing blinds, lifting arms, and tossing through the night – are not mere movements but expressions of deep emotional states. This emphasis on the corporeal aspects of love and longing is quintessentially Lawrencian, reflecting his belief in the body's wisdom and its inseparability from the mind and spirit.

The final stanzas, with their intense focus on the physical manifestations of desire – the "aching arms," "anguished, avid breast," and dream of a "yielded mouth" – demonstrate how memory and longing are not abstract concepts but deeply felt bodily experiences. This physicality reaches its apex in the final lines, where the imagined union with the beloved is described in terms of strength, carrying, and the peace of sleep "stronger even than wine."

Conclusion

"A Love Song" stands as a testament to D.H. Lawrence's ability to capture the complex, often contradictory nature of human emotions, particularly those related to love, memory, and absence. Through its innovative structure, vivid imagery, and exploration of the interplay between physical and emotional realities, the poem offers a profound meditation on the persistence of love in the face of separation.

The poem's power lies in its unflinching portrayal of the pain of absence alongside the intensity of remembered and imagined presence. By grounding abstract emotions in concrete, sensual imagery and physical sensations, Lawrence creates a work that resonates on both an intellectual and visceral level. "A Love Song" ultimately suggests that love, in all its complexity, is not diminished by distance or time but rather intensified, becoming a force that shapes our perceptions of the world and our place within it.

In its exploration of the tensions between memory and forgetfulness, presence and absence, and the physical and emotional aspects of love, "A Love Song" exemplifies the modernist preoccupation with the subjective experience of reality. Lawrence's poem invites readers to consider the ways in which love and memory intersect, shaping our experiences and our understanding of ourselves in relation to others. It stands as a poignant reminder of the enduring power of love to both comfort and disrupt, to both heal and wound, in its ceaseless presence in the human heart and mind.