Deeper than love

There is love, and it is a deep thing

but there are deeper things than love.

First and last, man is alone.

He is born alone, and alone he dies

and alone he is while he lives, in his deepest self.

Love, like the flowers, is life, growing.

But underneath are the deep rocks, the living rock that lives

alone

and deeper still the unknown fire, unknown and heavy, heavy

and alone.

Love is a thing of twoness.

But underneath any twoness, man is alone.

And underneath the great turbulent emotions of love, the

violent herbage,

lies the living rock of a single creature's pride,

the dark, naif pride.

And deeper even than the bedrock of pride

lies the ponderous fire of naked life

with its strange primordial consciousness of justice

and its primordial consciousness of connection,

connection with still deeper, still more terrible life-fire

and the old, old final life-truth.

Love is of twoness, and is lovely

like the living life on the earth

but below all roots of love lies the bedrock of naked pride,

subterranean,

and deeper than the bedrock of pride is the primordial fire of

the middle

which rests in connection with the further forever unknowable

fire of all things

and which rocks with a sense of connection, religion

and trembles with a sense of truth, primordial consciousness

and is silent with a sense of justice, the fiery primordial

imperative.

All this is deeper than love

deeper than love.

D. H. Lawrence