"The English Are So Nice!" by D H Lawrence (poetry reading)

He didn't just write Lady Chatterley's Lover. D H Lawrence at the Poetry Foundation:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/d-h-lawrence

The picture is the crowd at Royal Ascot, from The Daily Telegraph.

"Britannia Guards Our Coasts, Protecting a Typical English Family" a poster is available here:
http://www.art.co.uk/products/p4049627680-sa-i4694009/posters.htm


The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they are the nicest people in the world.

And what's more, they're very nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you're not nice they soon make you feel it.

Americans and French and Germans and so on
they're all very well
but they're not really nice, you know.
They're not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?

That's why one doesn't have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally—
But it doesn't really matter what you say to them,
they don't really understand—
you can just say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just be nice
but you must never take them seriously,
they wouldn't understand.

Just be nice, you know! Oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage—
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they're not quite
as nice as they might be.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• English.Are
• So
• Nice!
• Lawrence
• poetry
• poem

[7SaintsRow]

What a snobbish pretentious piece of horse crap..."Not so nice" he says...if he was so nice, then he would have kept it to himself like a gentleman...or would that have been too nice for him.

[SpokenVerse]

@7SaintsRow D H Lawrence was an English novelist, poet and painter. He spoke out against the tyranny of the upper classes and the oppression of the lower classes.

The English banned his books because they were too outspoken, branded him a pornographer and hounded him out of the country.

He spent most of his life in exile, a "savage pilimage" in the USA, Australia, France etc. Now he is regarded and one of the greatest novelist of the 20th century.

Thank you for your comment.

[frostythesasquatch]

It appears to me that modern commenters do not understand satire.

[Pichounator]

May I say that you have an excellent voice for this, with pauses in breath which simply feel right for the poem in sight.

When speaking to English people, that is often the situation - that they could say anything, and it would pass due to their reputation in the west (at least with Americans and continental Europeans). Even if you do not understand, you smile and laugh at what they spew.

Anyhow, I'm glad that we are not all that "nice" (in the posh sense).

[agrlfmtx]

How much wood could a wood chuck chuck

If a wood chuck could chuck wood? LOL

This poem is NICE!!

T:)

[Conspiracyknowledge]

24 irish thumbs this down ehehe

[paulpellicci]

...that was nice.....

[ThePilum]

DHL loved to poke at the aristocracy. There are several rants in Lady Chatterley against them.

[ModerateMartian]

D H Lawrence needs to get out more.