Summary
Summary of Birds, Beasts and Flowers
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Every living thing has its mystery
A fig, a mosquito and a snake can each become someone to address in Lawrence's poems. Fruit, flowers and animals are not scenery around a human life. Each has a life and mystery of its own, and the poet tries to pay attention to that difference.
His loose, speaking verse follows a thought rather than a neat pattern of rhyme. This gives his encounters room to change direction, moving from close observation into surprise, argument or reverence. What matters is not simply seeing nature, but meeting it.
Key idea 2
Travel becomes a search for connection
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Key idea 3
Fruit brings bodies and decay together
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Key idea 4
Plants reveal a sacred ordinary world
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Key idea 5
Animals expose the limits of pride
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Key idea 6
Wild animals measure a human loss
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Key idea 7
The voice makes thought feel present
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Key idea 8
Attention changes what ordinary things reveal
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love poems that sound like a person thinking aloud, and anyone drawn to nature writing with a sharp, odd edge.
What this book is
Birds, Beasts and Flowers is a book of poems by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1923. He wrote most of it between 1920 and 1923, while he and his wife Frieda moved from Italy to Sicily, then on to Germany, Ceylon, Australia and finally New Mexico. The poems look hard at fruit, trees, flowers, reptiles, birds and animals, and they treat each one as a living being with its own life and its own mystery.
The poems are written in loose, speaking free verse that follows the movement of a thought, with no neat rhyme or regular lines. You will hear him talk to a fig, scold a mosquito and bow before a snake. The book gives you a way of paying attention, and it asks what we lose when we treat nature as scenery. Let us start with the world these poems came out of, and why Lawrence was always on the move.
In this summary
- 1Poems written on the roadFree
- 2Fruits are bodies, and bodies are strange
- 3Trees and flowers hold hidden life
- 4Creatures that unsettle the human mind
- 5The New World brings larger beasts
- 6A voice built for reading aloud
Key point 1 of 6
Poems written on the road
Lawrence left England soon after the First World War. He felt shut out by a country that had banned his novel The Rainbow and had treated him with suspicion during the war years. He and Frieda went looking for a place where life felt fuller and less cramped.
The poems follow that search. Many were written in Tuscany and Sicily, where the climate and old landscapes gave him fruit, almond trees and cyclamens close at hand. Others come from later stops, including Australia and the American Southwest. The book is a kind of travel diary in which the chief subject is whatever living thing happens to stand in front of him.
The title promises a simple gathering of nature poems, but the poems are not postcards. Lawrence is not trying to describe a rose so that you can picture it. He is trying to meet it, and to say what it is like to be met in return. That is why so many poems begin with a small scene, such as a man at a trough or a tortoise on a path, and then grow into an argument or a prayer.
The book is also grouped. It moves through sections named for kinds of living things. It starts with fruit and trees, passes through flowers and creatures, and moves on to the large animals of the New World. As you read, you feel a mind widening its circle of attention, one living thing after another.
As a result, you can read the collection straight through or open it anywhere. Each poem stands on its own, yet each adds something to the whole picture of a man trying to see the world without his usual human pride.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
What does Lawrence seek when he writes about a living thing?
Right. “He is trying to meet it, and to say what it is like to be met in return.”Not quite. “He is trying to meet it, and to say what it is like to be met in return.”
What conflict does the snake at the trough awaken?
Right. “His education tells him to kill it, but something deeper feels honoured by the visit.”Not quite. “His education tells him to kill it, but something deeper feels honoured by the visit.”
What concern about modern life grows in the later animal poems?
Right. “He feared that people were cut off from the earth and from their own bodies, and that mechanical, industrial society was making them smaller.”Not quite. “He feared that people were cut off from the earth and from their own bodies, and that mechanical, industrial society was making them smaller.”
Questions about Birds, Beasts and Flowers
What is Birds, Beasts and Flowers about?
It is a collection of poems in which D. H. Lawrence looks closely at fruit, trees, flowers, reptiles, birds and animals. He treats each as a living presence and uses them to think about the body, desire, death and the sacred.
When was Birds, Beasts and Flowers written and published?
Lawrence wrote most of the poems between 1920 and 1923 while travelling through Italy, Sicily, Germany, Ceylon, Australia and the United States. The book was first published in 1923.
What is the poem Snake about?
Snake describes a man who finds a snake drinking at his water trough in Sicily. He feels both fear and respect, and the poem explores that conflict between learned habit and a deeper sense of honour.
Is Birds, Beasts and Flowers hard to read?
The language is plain, and the poems are in free verse with no rhyme to decode.
What is the main message of Lawrence's Birds, Beasts and Flowers?
Lawrence suggests that living things have their own mystery and that real attention to them can feel sacred. He also argues that modern people have lost touch with the body and the natural world.
