Between the sun and the moon, romantics and aesthetes alike choose the moon for inspiration; for its different phases, from waxing to waning, to crescent, to the bright orange glow of harvest in the autumnal equinox.
The moon's gravitational pull upon the earth and all its inhabitants, has long held a magnetic allure; poets and philosophers, and the spiritually-inclined, look to the moon for answers, to the emotional and psychological tremblings that trouble the soul; which falls right in line with D.H. Lawrence's raison d'etre; as an artist consumed by emotional, physical, and spiritual connectivity; all encompassed in the moon.
Moonrise
It will come as no surprise to learn that D.H. Lawrence's Moonrise delivers the reader a moon in the form of a woman, rising from the ocean as if emerging from a midnight bath, Flushed and grand and naked.
Lawrence's moon appears as a life-force almost inseparable from the ocean, like an indestructible goddess that blinds all who dare linger too long in her gaze, expressed magnificently (like Keats before him) in the line, beauty is a thing beyond the grave.
The ambiguous climax of Moonrise presumes to marry the infinite stars: time will dim the moon; with the mortality of man: Sooner than our full consummation.
Red Moon-Rise
D.H. Lawrence strikes all the right chords with Red Moon-Rise; a poem that flows so effortlessly, it reads like one long uninterrupted sentence that seems to encompass every notion and instinct a poet like Lawrence could fathom, all in a single breath.
Red Moon-Rise opens with the majestic picture of earth and sky brought together as one, to the beating rhythm of a train in the night; leaving life in its wake, littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed.
Life is plunged into darkness so immense and so deep, as to send those smothered between the darkness, fleeing into the night, in desperation, To escape in sleep the terror.
And suddenly, in a stroke of imaginative genius, uniquely and exceptionally D.H. Lawrence, red As if from the womb the moon arises; the darkness splits open to expel those blanketed by the night.
The ruddy terror of birth opens the way to an oddly alluring sense of spirituality; all the fright transformed into longing and appreciation for the glowing orb; as Lawrence seems to recreate the Wiccan ritual of Drawing down the Moon.
In the climax, Lawrence draws a connection between the moon-revelers, like fire-flames at their fierce desire, with the very same souls who once trembled before the moon: They are as earth's dread.
 |
