AFTER THE OPERA

By David Herbert Lawrence

DOWN the stone stairs

Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy

Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion up at me.

And I smile.

Ladies

Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet

Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out of the wreckage,

And among the wreck of the theatre crowd

I stand and smile.

They take tragedy so becomingly.

Which pleases me.