An Analysis of Poetry by D. H. Lawrence, 1916

Autumn Rain

D.H. Lawrence

THE plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;

The cloud sheaves
in heaven's fields set
droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face

falling--I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace

Heaven's muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain

of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain

caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain

now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible

of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain.

An Analysis of Poetry <Autumn Rain> by D. H. Lawrence, 1916

Sung Jiyun

“Art is form of religion without dogma,” said David Herbert Lawrence, a well-known British poet and novelist. He is famous for his criticize of the industrialized society and religious philosophy. His obnoxiously-drinking-miner father and an intelligent mother constantly had troubles, which resulted in his mother putting a limitless care for him. He became a very sensitive and religious person. He grew up in a Christian culture, and his ultimate goal of life was immediate communion with God. Such attitude of him is very unique, considering the time of his life, when there were movements to “see poems as they are.”

           This first impression of the poem is that it uses quite a bit of sensory imagery. With a specified persona exposed, he is standing alone under the autumn sky. He imagines the heaven above the sky, and heaven becomes the place where he stands. Plane leaves and cloud sheaves, which blocked the sunlight, are dropped to the ground now. Raindrops hit his face and the ground gently. There are golden harvests on the floor. A sudden gust of wind blows some harvests of pain and tears off. He winnows the empty heads of grain. From the crops, he thinks of manna- the grain of the heaven.

           It is astounding to see how the speaker derives such a delicate image of a simple autumn sight. The fact that he is a Christian helps- we learn to be thankful for the goods the God gave us. If it hadn’t for our Father, we wouldn’t live to this day at all- the daily bread we are given, not just manna. The speaker feels gratitude at the sight of harvest and simultaneously, develops a critical mind on it. He knows that the store is made of pain and tears, and feels they need to be treaded and blown away. In a way, he criticizes the real world by comparing it with the utopia- the heaven.

However, the poet moderates himself and does not get overwhelmed by emotion by structural means. Let’s look at the rhythm first. He uses a structure of iambic diameter, and sometimes adds variety by putting spondees. In other words, he mostly puts a stressed word after an unstressed word, which makes a serious tone. If I read it aloud, I can feel the flow of such things. Rhymes appear regularly, and some of the two words that rhyme have a correlation. For instance, there are ‘leaves and sheaves,’ ‘pain and slain,’ and ‘invisible and divisible,’ which contains a similar meaning. Also, he breaks the lines in the middle of a sentence. By controlling the syntax short, he visualizes the rainfall.

This poem feels like a admiration of the autumn raining view at a glance, but we should know that it has a more profound meaning inside the content, and a carefully calculated structure to transport that meaning to its readers. As a whole, this poem helps us appreciating what we already have; in the old times, when the store was literally harvested in the sheaves of pain of the rabbles, there was no escape of that faith. They had to work endlessly like a mere part of a giant machine, and the tiny pay they got was never enough to make things better. Grateful we should be, for the fact that as long as we work hard, our works pay off.