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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What changes when a fig, a mosquito and a snake stop being scenery and demand your attention?
In Birds, Beasts and Flowers, D. H. Lawrence meets the natural world as something alive, strange and full of mystery. This collection of poems moves from pomegranates, peaches and figs to trees, flowers, reptiles, birds and beasts. He talks to a fig, scolds a mosquito and bows before a snake: each encounter challenges the habit of putting human life first.
Lawrence writes in loose, speaking free verse, with lines that stretch or shorten as his thoughts move. A baby tortoise makes its first small crawl; a turkey cock struts with ancient pride. Fruit becomes bodily and strange, while trees and flowers hold a quieter life. Throughout, the poems ask what we lose when we treat nature as a backdrop.
What you’ll discover
- Fruit with hidden depths Meet pomegranates, peaches and figs in poems that make familiar fruit feel strange.
- A snake commands respect Follow an encounter that brings a human speaker face to face with another creature’s mystery.
- The tortoise’s small beginning Watch a baby tortoise crawl into poems attentive to its separate, unfamiliar life.
- Trees and flowers grow quieter Enter a gentler mood without losing the strong feeling that runs through these poems.
- Thought becomes living speech Feel free verse follow a thinking voice, without neat rhyme or regular lines.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you like poems that talk like a living voice, watch animals and plants closely, or enjoy travel, myth and bold opinions.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Living things answer the poet back
- Fruit reveals the body's hidden life
- Blossom breaks through the apparent iron
- The beasts resist their spiritual taming
- Animals expose the limits of understanding
- The tortoise moves from solitude toward desire
- Each animal reflects a different hunger
- The voice keeps arguing with the world
- Attention leaves other lives their mystery
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Birds, Beasts and Flowers
by D. H. Lawrence · 1923
A snake drinks at a Sicilian water trough, and a poet must decide whether to kill it.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to read20 languages
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“Ripe figs won’t keep.”
In short
A snake comes to drink at a water trough on a hot Sicilian day. The man who owns the trough hears inner voices urging him to kill it.
Birds, Beasts and Flowers at a glance
- Reading time
- About 1 h 45 min1 h 20 min fast, 2 h 5 min slow
- Length
- 24,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1923by D. H. Lawrence
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Lawrence gives every creature a voice
Birds, Beasts and Flowers is a book of poems about living things, written in the early years after the First World War. Lawrence was living abroad, partly by choice and partly because he could not settle in England. Many poems name a place at the end, so the book reads like a travel diary kept in verse.
The poems come in groups: fruits, trees, flowers, the evangelists and their beasts, then creatures, reptiles, birds and animals. The last poems, written in New Mexico, turn to ghosts and to the eagle of America.
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Details
- First published
- 1923
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 1 h 50 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Lawrence, D. H. Birds, Beasts and Flowers. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/birds-beasts-and-flowers.
Lawrence, D. H. (2026). Birds, beasts and flowers. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/birds-beasts-and-flowers (Original work published 1923)
Lawrence, D. H. Birds, Beasts and Flowers. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/birds-beasts-and-flowers.
@book{lawrence2026birds,
author = {Lawrence, D. H.},
title = {Birds, Beasts and Flowers},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/birds-beasts-and-flowers},
note = {First published 1923}
}
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What is Birds, Beasts and Flowers about?
It is a collection of poems about fruits, trees, flowers and animals, written by D. H. Lawrence as he travelled through Italy, Sicily, Germany, Ceylon, Australia and New Mexico. Each poem looks closely at one living thing and asks what it means.
What is the poem Snake about?
A golden snake comes to drink at the poet's water trough in Sicily. He feels honored but also afraid, and when it retreats he throws a log. He then regrets the act and wishes the snake would return.
Why are there poems about the four evangelists?
Christian tradition links Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with a man, a lion, a bull and an eagle. Lawrence uses each creature to explore a human power such as the heart, the senses, the will or the mind.
The author
D. H. Lawrence
1885–1930 · English novelist and poet
D. H. Lawrence was an English novelist and poet, among the most controversial and influential writers of the early twentieth century. Lady Chatterley's Lover, long banned for its frankness, became a landmark in the fight against literary censorship.
“Ripe figs won’t keep.”
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