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

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.