“It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.”

English novelist, poet, and painter

David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer, critic, and painter, active in the early 20th century. He wrote novels, stories, poems, plays, essays, and travel writing, and is best known for his modernist fiction. His work looks closely at modern life, industrial society, and the strain of social alienation, while also giving strong place to sexuality, vitality, and instinct. Four of his best-known novels, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover, became the subject of censorship trials because of their frank treatment of romance, sexuality, and language.