And you remember, in the afternoon
The sea and the sky went grey, as if there had sunk
A flocculent dust on the floor of the world: the festoon
Of the sky sagged dusty as spider cloth,
And coldness clogged the sea, till it ceased to croon.
A dank, sickening scent came up from the grime
Of weed that blackened the shore, so that I recoiled
Feeling the raw cold dun me: and all the time
You leapt about on the slippery rocks, and threw
The words that rang with a brassy, shallow chime.
And all day long that raw and ancient cold
Deadened me through, till the grey downs darkened to sleep.
Then I longed for you with your mantle of love to fold
Me over, and drive from out of my body the deep
Cold that had sunk to my soul, and there kept hold.
But still to me all evening long you were cold,
And I was numb with a bitter, deathly ache;
Till old days drew me back into their fold,
And dim sheep crowded me warm with companionship,
And old ghosts clustered me close, and sleep was cajoled.
I slept till dawn at the window blew in like dust,
Like the linty, raw-cold dust disturbed from the floor
Of a disused room: a grey pale light like must
That settled upon my face and hands till it seemed
To flourish there, as pale mould blooms on a crust.
Then I rose in fear, needing you fearfully,
For I thought you were warm as a sudden jet of blood.
I thought I could plunge in your spurting hotness, and be
Clean of the cold and the must.—With my hand on the latch
I heard you in your sleep speak strangely to me.
And I dared not enter, feeling suddenly dismayed.
So I went and washed my deadened flesh in the sea
And came back tingling clean, but worn and frayed
With cold, like the shell of the moon: and strange it seems
That my love has dawned in rose again, like the love of a maid.
Love Poem by DH Lawrence
Meaning of the Poem ‘Coldness in Love’ by D. H. Lawrence
In Coldness in Love, D. H. Lawrence explores emotional distance and yearning through a physical and atmospheric metaphor of cold. The speaker recalls a day at the seaside when the sky and sea became heavy with greyness, mirroring the chill that had crept into his relationship. His lover, light and distant, seems untouched by the oppressive mood, throwing around shallow words while he is paralysed by a deep, soul-penetrating cold. As evening falls, the speaker longs for warmth, both physical and emotional, but finds only continued detachment.
Haunted by past intimacy, the speaker turns inward to old memories and the comfort of sleep. In the final stanzas, he wakes with a desperate desire to reconnect, to be purified and revived by his lover’s warmth. Yet even in sleep, his lover seems alien, and the speaker hesitates to bridge the divide. Ultimately, he finds a strange renewal: not through his partner, but through confronting and cleansing himself in the cold sea. The poem captures the pain of love grown distant, the longing for closeness, and the strange, self-affirming rebirth that can follow emotional estrangement.
