The poetry of D. H. Lawrence seems most commonly to have one (or both) of two themes: nature and love. The vast majority of his subject matter pertains to nature or flowers or animals in one way or another, and quite often depicts sex or love among these creatures. It seems that he finds the true poetry of nature to be in the gritty, close-up parts and acts of nature: a kind of intimacy that can't hide the dirt beneath the fingernails.
Besides the au naturel love-making, Lawrence also relates different parts of nature in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. For instance, contrast the butterfly eating dirt in "Butterfly" with the snake drinking at the water trough in "The Snake." The butterfly, often a symbol of nature's glory and beauty, is brought low, resting on someone's shoe and even "sip[ping] the dirt" from it, while the snake, who crawls through the dirt, is revered: "Someone was before me at my water-trough, / And I, like a second comer, waiting."
Lawrence seems to bring nature a fullness with these glimpses, rounding out his readers' possibly narrow perspective of it.
Another example is Lawrence's descriptions of nature in "Southern Night." The speaker sees the moon, which apparently is red on this particular night, and calls it "thou red thing," "this red anathema," and "the red Macula." Typically one thinks of the moon to "set the mood" when it comes to love on a romantic night; it is also recognized as a symbol of renewal, even of guidance. However, much like in Picasso's Guernica, this particular light in the night is only an illuminator of horror. The speaker laments his memories, likening them to mosquitoes biting.
Memories, northern memories,
Bitter-stinging white world that bore us
Subsiding into this night.
The moon here guides the speaker not into enlightenment, but defilement: "Maculate / The red Macula."
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