Page:Tortoises, DH Lawrence, 1921.djvu/22

 Rh It needed Pythagoras to see life placing her counters on the living back Of the baby tortoise; Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet, Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise-shell. The first little mathematical gentleman Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens, Threes and fours and twelves, All the volte face of decimals, The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.

Turn him on his back, The kicking little beetle, And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touch- ing belly, The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross And on either side count five, On each side, two above, on each side, two below The dark bar horizontal. Rh