How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species �
Presentable, eminently presentable �
shall I make you a present of him?
Isn�t he handsome? Isn�t he healthy? Isn�t he a fine specimen?
Doesn�t he look the fresh clean englishman, outside?
Isn�t it god�s own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
Wouldn�t you like to be like that, well off, and quite the thing?
Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another man�s need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life face him with a new
demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new demand on his
intelligence,
a new life-demand.
How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species �
Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable �
and life a fungus, living on the remains of bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life than his own.
And even so, he�s stale, he�s been there too long.
Touch him, and you�ll find he�s all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.
Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty �
How beastly the bourgeois is!
Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp England
what a pity they can�t all be kicked over
like a sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.
- D.H. Lawrence
The poem was selected from The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Diego Rivera
