Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems by D. H. Lawrence

In Short

This volume is a vibrant, idiosyncratic odyssey through the physical world, cataloging fruits, flowers, animals, and landscapes with a uniquely jagged, intimate gaze. Rather than merely describing nature, the poems inhabit it, using encounters with snakes, tortoises, and mosquitoes to interrogate the soul’s relationship to the instinctual, the sexual, and the divine. Because it prioritizes emotional truth and the "living" moment over static form, the book remains a striking example of early twentieth-century modernism, celebrated for its raw, conversational rhythm and its fierce resistance to sentimentality.

The Story

The journey begins in the sun-drenched, ancient Mediterranean, where the poet finds himself surrounded by the remnants of old worlds. In Sicily and Tuscany, the landscape is heavy with history, yet the focus remains intensely present and physical. Fruits—pomegranates, figs, and grapes—are not merely food but vessels of hidden, ruptured intensity, prompting the poet to reflect on the nature of "affirmation" and the limits of the human. These early poems establish a tension: the poet is deeply drawn to the primordial, dark, and "flowerless" world of the vine, an ancient existence that predates the "explicit" and orderly world of European thought.

As the speaker moves through his surroundings, he is constantly confronted by the "otherness" of non-human life. He observes the lizard-like persistence of the tortoise, the "wingless" and "satanic" energy of the mosquito, and the unsettling, rhythmic intelligence of the snake. Each encounter is a negotiation of his own humanity. When he watches a snake drink at his water-trough, he is torn between the socialized impulse to kill—the "voice of education"—and the instinctual awe of a man witnessing a king from the underworld. He rejects the "paltry" act of throwing a log at the creature, finding in that rejection a moment of profound, self-loathing clarity.

This arc of displacement and discovery eventually pulls the speaker toward the New World. The focus shifts from the ancient, calcified history of the Mediterranean to the "elvish," "uncanny" landscape of America. In New Mexico, the poet finds a different kind of intensity—a desert vastness that feels both "nascent" and "demonish." Here, the ghosts of old civilizations and the "skeleton" of the industrial machine collide. The poet casts himself as a "red wolf," a homeless wanderer who has followed the sun to its western limit, only to find he must now wait for a "new story" to emerge from the silence.

The collection concludes with a meditation on the American Eagle, a bird caught between its role as a "sucking dove" of liberty and its true nature as a predator of power. The speaker realizes that the old gods and the old ideals are failing; they are "moulting" like the eagle on Patmos. The final movement of the book is not a resolution, but an arrival at a threshold. The speaker stands exposed in the desert, no longer anchored by the familiar symbols of the past, fully resigned to the "horizontal," ceaseless, and often terrifying life of the earth itself.

How It Unfolds

The Mediterranean awakening The poet begins by immersing himself in the intense, color-saturated life of Sicily and Tuscany. He finds that the fruits of these lands—the pomegranate and the fig—possess an inner, "glittering" violence that defies human attempts to label or contain them.

The encounter with the primitive He turns his attention to creatures that exist outside the bounds of human morality. By observing the snake, the tortoise, and the mosquito, he confronts the "otherness" of life that does not share his God or his understanding of time.

The critique of the spirit He challenges the traditional, "mind-soaring" intellect represented by the Evangelists and their symbols. He calls for the "eagle" of the mind to come down from the clouds and experience the reality of the earth, even if that experience is messy and "moulting."

The journey into the West The setting shifts to the harsh, expansive light of New Mexico. The poet sheds his European identity, identifying instead with the "red wolf" of the desert, and confronts the "demons" of a landscape that does not recognize his past.

The final confrontation He reflects on the American eagle, a symbol now stripped of its idealism and forced to reckon with its own nature. The book ends in the quiet, desolate space of the desert, where the poet waits for a new beginning that he can no longer predict.

The People

The "people" in this work are rarely human in the traditional sense. The Poet himself is the primary figure, a man in transition who is perpetually trying to shed his own "acculturated" ego. He is a seeker who wants to be "put down" on the earth like a child, stripped of the "wings of the spirit" that he finds hypocritical. He wants to return to a state of "nakedness" where he can encounter the world without the filter of his upbringing.

Opposing him is the voice of Education, a collective, nagging authority that constantly tells him how he should feel—that he should kill the venomous snake, that he should look down on the "loutish" socialists, that he should revere the eagle of the spirit. He battles this voice throughout, often failing to silence it, yet always noting the "vulgarity" of listening to it.

Then there is the Tortoise, a central, symbolic figure of stubborn, reptilian integrity. The tortoise represents a "stoic" existence that is "inordinately there," a creature that doesn't need to be loved or understood to justify its existence. The Snake serves as a similar, though more dangerous, archetype of the "king in exile," a guest from the "burning bowels of the earth" who commands a respect that the poet is ashamed to admit he feels. Finally, the American Eagle emerges as a figure of failed potential, an emblem of a new, "demonish" power that has grown too large for its own ideals, waiting for a fire that will either destroy it or clear the way for something unknown.

In Its Own Voice

"For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack."

The poet argues that the "fissure" in the pomegranate, much like a broken heart, reveals a hidden, beautiful reality.

"And my heart accused itself Thinking: I am not the measure of creation. This is beyond me, this fish. His God stands outside my God."

After killing a fish, the speaker realizes that the creature exists in a world that is fundamentally indifferent to human morality.

"But remember, Saviour, That my heart which like a lark at heaven’s gate singing, hovers morning-bright to Thee, Throws still the dark blood back and forth In the avenues where the bat hangs sleeping, upside-down"

The poet addresses the divine, insisting that he cannot deny the "bat-winged" darkness of his own nature even while aspiring to the light.

What It's Really About

The central argument is that modern humanity has alienated itself from the "blood-knowledge" of the earth. The poet posits that we are living in an "iron age" where our intellects, ideals, and religions have become detached from the physical, horizontal reality of life. He probes the question of whether it is possible to live fully without the "ascension" of the spirit, suggesting that our obsession with progress and high-mindedness has left us "moulting" and spiritually hollow. The book is an attempt to bridge the gap between our "bat-winged" spirit—which seeks the heights—and the "dark, aboriginal" truth of the earth, where life is lived in the "acrid humus" of birth, sex, and death.

Why Read It Today

Readers who value raw, unfiltered honesty and the power of the natural world will find this collection vital. There is a startling immediacy to the language; it feels as though the poet is discovering these things as he writes them, with a mixture of delight and genuine, often abrasive, frustration. It is a deeply "felt" book, capturing the way a landscape can change one’s internal state.

However, the reader should be prepared for its unapologetic subjectivity. The poet’s period attitudes—particularly his dismissive views on women and his sometimes aggressive assertions about "primitive" cultures—are present, reflecting the biases of his time and his specific, volatile temperament. His tone can feel combative, and he often adopts a stance of superiority that may be jarring to a modern reader. Yet, despite these difficulties, the book is never static. Its rhythm is designed to mimic the pulse of the living world, moving from the delicate observation of a cyclamen to the jagged, "yawping" cry of an American eagle. What stays with you is the poet's relentless pursuit of a "new story"—a reminder that when the old gods fall, the world does not end, but rather, it begins to reveal its true, unvarnished face.