Making his advances <br />He does not look at her, nor sniff at her, <br />No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank. <br />Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin <br />That work beneath her while she sprawls along <br />In her ungainly pace, <br />Her folds of skin that work and row <br />Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves. <br /> <br />And so he strains beneath her housey wall, <br />And catches her trouser-legs in his beak <br />Suddenly, or her skinny limb, <br />And strange and grimly drags at her <br />Like a dog, <br />Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful persistency. <br /> <br />Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed. <br />Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation <br />And doomed to partiality, partial being, <br />Ache, and want of being, <br />Want, <br />Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to her. <br /> <br />Born to walk alone, <br />Fore-runner, <br />Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track, <br />This awkward, harrowing pursuit, <br />This grim necessity from within. <br /> <br />Does she know <br />As she moves eternally slowly away? <br />Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window, <br />All knowledgeless? <br /> <br />The awful concussion, <br />And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue, <br /> <br />Driven, after aeons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness, <br />At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron, <br />Driven away from himself into her tracks, <br />Forced to crash against her. <br /> <br />Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile, <br />Little gentleman, <br />Sorry plight, <br />We ought to look the other way. <br /> <br />Save that, having come with you so far, <br />We will go on to the end.<br /><br />David Herbert Lawrence<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tortoise-gallantry/
