Lawrence imagines the street lamps as living fragments of the day’s sun. When the sun sets, it seems to shatter, and its golden light drifts through the town like thistle-down seeds, each lamp a separate seed looking for somewhere to settle. The speaker watches them float above the moving crowd, crossing, meeting, and disappearing in the purple distance. There is wonder here, but also a quiet sadness: the day is finished absolutely, and no same sun will return. The lamps become tired, wandering sparks that want only to sink into darkness and sleep, to let go of effort and memory. The final lines deepen that mood into something like relief—darkness as rest, silence, even forgiveness. Overall, the poem feels dreamy and hushed, turning an ordinary evening street scene into a slow, melancholy dispersal of light.
Street Lamps — Summary
Gold, with an innermost speck Of silver, singing afloat Beneath the night, Like balls of thistle-down Wandering up and down Over the whispering town Seeking where to alight!
Slowly, above the street Above the ebb of feet Drifting in flight; Still, in the purple distance The gold of their strange persistence As they cross and part and meet And pass out of sight!
The seed-ball of the sun Is broken at last, and done Is the orb of day. Now to the separate ends Seed after day-seed wends A separate way.
No sun will ever rise Again on the wonted skies In the midst of the spheres. The globe of the day, over-ripe, Is shattered at last beneath the stripe Of the wind, and its oneness veers Out myriad-wise.
Seed after seed after seed Drifts over the town, in its need To sink and have done; To settle at last in the dark, To bury its weary spark Where the end is begun.
Darkness, and depth of sleep, Nothing to know or to weep Where the seed sinks in To the earth of the under-night Where all is silent, quite Still, and the darknesses steep Out all the sin.