by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885 - 1930)
The man of Tyre
Language: English
Available translation(s): GER
The man of Tyre went down to the sea pondering, for he was Greek, that God is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. And a woman who had been washing clothes in the pool of rock where a stream came down to the gravel of the sea and sank in, who had spread the white washing on the gravel banked above the bay, who had lain in her shift on the shore, on the shingle slope, who had waded to the pale green sea of evening, out to a shoal, pouring sea-water over herself now turned, and came slowly back, with her back to the evening sky. Oh lovely, lovely with the dark hair piled up, as she went deeper, deeper down the channel, then rose shallower, shallower with the full thighs slowly lifting of the wader wading shorewards and the shoulders pallid with light from the silent sky behind both breasts dim and mysterious, with the glamorous kindness of twilight between them and the dim blotch of black maidenhair like an indicator giving a message to the man - So in the cane-brake he clasped his hands in delight that could only be god-given, and murmured: Lo! God is one god! But here in the twilight godly and lovely comes Aphrodite out of the sea towards me!
Authorship:
- by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885 - 1930), appears in Last Poems, (1929). [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Olli Kortekangas (b. 1955), "The man of Tyre", from Amores, no. 2. [text verified 1 time]
Available translations, adaptations, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , title 1: "Der Mann aus Tyros", copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 23
Word count: 222