If you live along with all the other people <br /> and are just like them, and conform, and are nice <br /> you're just a worm -- <br /> <br /> and if you live with all the other people <br /> and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform <br /> then you're just the worm that has turned, <br /> in either case, a worm. <br /> <br /> The conforming worm stays just inside the skin <br /> respectably unseen, and cheerfully gnaws away at the heart of life, <br /> making it all rotten inside. <br /> <br /> The unconforming worm -- that is, the worm that has turned -- <br /> gnaws just the same, gnawing the substance out of life, <br /> but he insists on gnawing a little hole in the social epidermis <br /> and poking his head out and waving himself <br /> and saying: Look at me, I am not respectable, <br /> I do all the things the bourgeois daren't do, <br /> I booze and fornicate and use foul language and despise your honest man.-- <br /> <br /> But why should the worm that has turned protest so much? <br /> The bonnie bonnie bourgeois goes a-whoring up back streets just the same. <br /> The busy busy bourgeois imbibes his little share <br /> just the same <br /> if not more. <br /> The pretty pretty bourgeois pinks his language just as pink <br /> if not pinker, <br /> and in private boasts his exploits even louder, if you ask me, <br /> than the other. <br /> While as to honesty, Oh look where the money lies! <br /> <br /> So I can't see where the worm that has turned puts anything over <br /> the worm that is too cunning to turn. <br /> On the contrary, he merely gives himself away. <br /> The turned worm shouts. I bravely booze! <br /> the other says. Have one with me! <br /> The turned worm boasts: I copulate! <br /> the unturned says: You look it. <br /> You're a d----- b----- b----- p----- bb-----, says the worm that's turned. <br /> Quite! says the other. Cuckoo!<br /><br />David Herbert Lawrence<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/worm-either-way-2/
