The+Ship+Of+Death+-+D.H.+Lawrence


 * The Ship of Death**

I Now it is autumn and the failing fruit and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew to bruise themselves and exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell to one’s own self, and find an exit from the fallen self.

II Have you built your ship of death, O have you? O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes! Ah! can’t you smell it?

And in the bruised body, the frightened soul finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold that blows upon it through the orifices.

III And can a man his own quietus make with a bare bodkin?

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make a bruise or break for exit for his life; but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder ever a quietus make?

IV O let us talk of quiet that we know, that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus make?

V Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.

And die the death, the long and painful death that lies between the old self and the new.

Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised, already our souls are oozing through the exit of the cruel bruise.

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end is washing in through the breachers of our wounds, already the flood is upon us.

Oh build your ship of death, your little ark and furnish it with food, with little cakes and wine for the dark flight down oblivion.

VI Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying and our strength leave us, and our souls cower naked in the dark rain over the flood, cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

//D.H. Lawrence - 1929-30//