weight is a drag on his arms, just as a saturated bee weighs down the flower it clings to after a shower. Perhaps what Lawrence really means is that the emotional, rather than the physical, burden of a sick child is a heavy one: ‘She who has always seemed so light/ Sways on my arm like sorrowful, storm-heavy boughs’. The simile of sagging water-logged branches is very effective. The adjective ‘sorrowful’ conveys how the branches droop with the weight of the water and indicates the limpness of the baby’s limbs. Another effective simile is used to compare the little girl’s hair to delicate new leaves which have been battered by rain: ‘Even her floating hair sinks like storm-bruised young leaves/ Reaching downwards’. It is very easy to picture a sleeping baby, her hair drooping and her limbs slack in sleep, carefully held in an adult’s arms, from Lawrence’s tender description.
Lawrence concludes the poem by returning to the simile of the ‘drenched, drowned bee’ that he began with. The alliteration of the ‘d’ sound, as well as the use of hyperbole in the potent verbs ‘drenched’ and ‘drowned’, makes this line very effective. There is a sense of relief that the baby, while drained from her illness, will be restored by sleep: ‘As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee/ Are a heaviness, and a weariness.’ There is a very tender tone to this poem, which also explores the theme of compassion.
