XXI Poems: Towards the Source

by Christopher Brennan

Wind and Wave Press

2007
 First Published in 1897
This Edition Pulished in 2007
by Wind and Wave Press
2/3 Monterey Avenue, Banora Point, NSW Australia
 Table of Contents

FIRST NOCTURN (Northern): "I will free my soul from this stifling place" 5
TREES: "We sat entwined an hour or two together" 7
SECOND NOCTURN (Tropic): "Sighing-" 8
BELLS: "After the garish day" 9
AUBADE: "We woke together on a gusty dawn" 10
FATUM: "Dumb Sibyl, sitting at my birth" 11
FUNERA REGUM: "Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death" 12
THULE: "Where star-cold and the dread of space" 13
SICUT INCENSUM: "Dies Dominica! the sunshine burns" 14
ADVESPERASCIT: "The grand cortege of glory and youth is gone" 15
CITIES: I "The yellow gas is fired from street to street" 16
SOUL-SICKNESS: II "Ah, who will give us back our long-lost innocence" 17
DAWN: III "Let us go down, the long dead night is done" 19
MISTS: "Deep mists of longing blur the land" 20
SEAS: "When summer comes in her glory and brave the whole earth blows" 21
SOURCE: "And shall the living waters heed" 22
BLUE-FLOWER: "And does she still perceive, her curtain drawn" 23
ROMANCE: "Of old, on her terrace at evening" 24
ERO SICUT DEUS: "My heart was wandering in the sands" 25
THE LONELIEST HOUR: "White dawn, that tak'st the heaven with sweet surprise" 26
VISION: "I saw my life as whitest flame" 27
 FIRST NOCTURN (Northern)

. . in locum refrigerii . .

I will free my soul from this stifling place,

I will plunge where the waters are cold and roar!
I will dash myself into the midst of their race:
Below in the forest I know the place--
5 The woods hide the dam over which they pour,
But I hear them ever in the lonely night--
And there where the whiten'd wave
Strains back towards the peace forsaken-repentant, in vain! --I will plunge and lave
My naked body, my throbbing soul
10 That the waters may heal and save.

Or hush! do you hear? it sounds like the sea!

Yes, the sea must be near! it would make me whole:
I will steal me out of the hothouse at night
When she sees me not, when she heeds not me
15 When her cruel play hath other prey
I will creep down still to the mother's call from the stifling house--you will not betray?
Creep down and leap
Headlong into their bosom, the waters! drink long and deep
Cool me, lave me without and within,
20 Cool the hotness of mortal sin
Yield up the mortal breath--

O the deep
O the sea-wind's breadth and the blue,
The speaking blue of the mystic night!
25 They shall freshen my soul from its fever of sleep
From its dream of death
And the flesh shall be born anew!

Then beat me ye waves ! O beat me to death,

Whirl me, buried in your seething spray!
30 I will none of your languid ironic caresses
Such as she yields here in the night of her tresses--
That fritter the soul away--
Up here in the hothouse: she laughs in the night
When the fever'd desire
35 May find no delight
In the pleasure withheld till the joy is fled
And the heart grown fierce, till the soul is dead
And passion paler with hate:
But cruel, O sea, will I have you and fierce and strong in
40 your chastening ire
To drown this passion, to quench this fire
That is eating my soul away.

(Is it not too late?)

Then cleans'd might I walk in my mists again

45 That my soul loves, haunted by loves without stain
Pallid as the mists and cold as they
That I dream of ever in the lonely night--
O their silver silence, the mists! lo, there
They dream over river-bank and lake!
50 Thro' the hothouse glass I see them wake
To the lamp of the rising moon:--my prayer
Dost thou hear it, Lord? do I cry in vain?
Is there no way out of the choking air?
 TREES

We sat entwined an hour or two together

(how long I know not underneath pine-trees
that rustled ever in the soft spring weather
stirr'd by the sole suggestion of the breeze:

5 we sat and dreamt that strange hour out together

fill'd with the sundering silence of the seas:
the trees moan'd for us in the tender weather
we found no word to speak beneath those trees

but listen'd wondering to their dreamy dirges

10 sunder'd even then in voiceless misery;
heard in their boughs the murmur of the surges
saw the far sky as curv'd above the sea.

That noon seem'd some forgotten afternoon,

cast out from Life, where Time might scarcely be:
15 our old love was but remember'd as some swoon;
Sweet, I scarce thought of you nor you of me

but, lost in the vast, we watched the minutes halting

into the deep that sunders friend from friend;
spake not nor stirr'd but heard the murmurs wasting
20 into the silent distance without end:

so, whelm'd in that silence, seem'd to us as one

our hearts and all their desolate reverie,
the irrestible melancholy of the sun,
the irresistible sadness of the sea.
 SECOND NOCTURN (Tropic)

Sighing--
the wind from the equator thro' the trees
faintly fell
or wander'd like a spirit ill at ease,
5 that we heard its echoes dying
where we lay
in our chamber by the tropic ocean's swell
night and day.
Lying--
10 side by side--
we heard the rising ocean to the dying wind replying,
heard its surge advance with still insistent call
or subside
to the night-wind's dying fall
15 sighing--
thro' the night we heard it sobbing
as the tide
rose in rhythmic monotone;
till at last our twin hearts pulsed upon its ceaseless throbbing,
20 till we felt them fall and rise and drift asunder
leagues of night between them thrown--
O so wide!
O the wonder
that we felt but a vague and strange emotion
25 felt a dim and blind and infinite emotion
of the mystery, the wonder
that the night-wind and the ocean
and the traitor night should set us twain asunder
who were lying,
30 heart to heart,
in our love-chamber by the boundless ocean--
there were lying--
yet apart,
sunder'd by the nightly ocean
35 heart from heart!
 BELLS

. . paco cruentos . .

After the garish day

its dust and turbulence and aching glare,
fled to familiar night
I sat at the evening's quiet work
5 freshen'd in brain and nerve;
paused for a moment in the quiet labour
--the golden lamplight brooded on the floor
and all seem'd to listen to the churchbells ringing
solemn and glad, across the lake of memory,
10 a far-off strain of peace:
Peace!
no craving, no unrest . .
seeing all, hearing all,
giving thanks ever,
15 not of the world but dwelling in it
cloister'd, watchers of eternity
chant we the hours
untouch'd by the day or its glare!
but at monastic midnight
20 sing we for him that will hear us
faithful ever, our hymn of praise
content in the peace of our dream.
 AUBADE

We woke together on a gusty dawn

in the dim house amid the level waste
and stared in anguish on the stretch of years
fill'd with grey dawn and ever-weeping wind

5 for as the hour hung still 'twixt night and day

we whom the dark had drawn so close together
at that dead tide as strangers saw each other
strangers divided by a sea of years

we might not weep out our passion of despair

10 but in lorn trance we gazed upon each other
and wonder'd what strange ways had brought our hands
together in that chamber of the west

we felt the dumb compulsion of the hour

to wander forth in spirit on the wind
15 and drift far apart in undiscover'd realms
of some blank world where dawn for ever wept
 FATUM

Dumb Sibyl, sitting at my birth

(or shall I call thee Sphinx?) that thought
my riddle thus in brain distraught
. . His Elsinore the patient earth,

5 this shivering loon shall drape himself

among congenial rooks and daws
play Hamlet to his soul's applause
and pay him with his fancy's pelf . .

unseal thy lips if ne'er again!

10 and if I may not swing me high
where nuptial-songs of sea and sky
might fit my soul for Imogen

teach me at least of such desires

to lay the ghost and so escape
15 scorn of the night my trappings ape
and keen derision of its fires.
 FUNERA REGUM

Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death,

beside its dying sacrificial fire;
the dim world's middle-age of vain desire
is strangely troubled, waiting for the breath
5 that speaks the winter's welcome malison
to fix it in the unremembering sleep:
the silent woods brood o'er an anxious deep,
and in the faded sorrow of the sun,
I see my dreams' dead colours, one by one,
10 forth-conjur'd from their smouldering palaces,
fade slowly with the sigh of the passing year.
They wander not nor wring their hands nor weep,
discrown'd belated dreams! but in the drear
and lingering world we sit among the trees
15 and bow our heads as they, with frozen mouth,
looking, in ashen reverie, towards the clear
sad splendour of the winter of the far south.
 THULE

Where star-cold and the dread of space

in icy silence bind the main
I feel but vastness on my face,
I sit, a mere incurious brain,

5 under some outcast satellite,

some Thule of the universe,
upon the utter verge of night
frozen by some forgotten curse.

The ways are hidden from mine eyes

10 that brought me to this ghastly shore:
no embers in their depths arise
of suns I may have known of yore.

Somewhere I dream of tremulous flowers

and meadows fervent with appeal
15 far among fever'd human hours
whose pulses here I never feel:

that on my careless name afar

a voice is calling ever again
beneath some other wounded star
20 removed for ever from my ken:

vain fictions! silence fills my ear,

the deep my gaze: I reck of nought,
as I have sat for ages here,
concentred in my brooding thought.
 SICUT INCENSUM

Dies Dominica! the sunshine burns

strong incense on the breathing fields of morn:
lucid, intense, all colour towards it yearns
that souls of flowers on the air are born.

5 What claustral joy to-day is on the air

--expanding now and one with the celebrant sun--
and fills with pointed flame all things aware,
all flowers and souls that sing--and I am one!

Dies Dominica! the passion yearns,

10 and the whole world and singer is but one flower
from out whose luminous chalice odour burns
intenser toward the blue thro' this keen hour:

--this hour is my eternity! the soul

rises, expanding ever, with the sight,
15 thro' flowers and colours, and the visible whole
of beauty mingled in one dream of light.
 ADVESPERASCIT

The grand cortège of glory and youth is gone

flaunt standards, and the flood of brazen tone:
I alone linger, a regretful guest,
here where the hostelry has crumbled down,
5 emptied of warmth and life, and the little town
lies cold and ruin'd, all its bravery done,
wind-blown, wind-blown, where not even dust may rest.
No cymbal-clash warms the chill air: the way
lies stretch'd beneath a slanting afternoon,
10 the which no piled pyres of the slaughter'd sun,
no silver sheen of eve shall follow: Day,
ta'en at the throat and choked, in the huge slum
o' the common world, shall fall across the coast,
yellow and bloodless, not a wound to boast.
15 But if this bare-blown waste refuse me home
and if the skies wither my vesper-flight,
'twere well to creep, or ever livid night
wrap the disquiet earth in horror, back
where the old church stands on our morning's track,
20 and in the iron-entrellis'd choir, among
rust tombs and blazons, where an isle of light
is bosom'd in the friendly gloom, devise
proud anthems in a long forgotten tongue:
so cozening youth's despair o'er joy that dies.
 CITIES

The yellow gas is fired from street to street

past rows of heartless homes and hearths unlit,
dead churches, and the unending pavement beat
by crowds--say rather, haggard shades that flit

5 round nightly haunts of their delusive dream,

where'er our paradisal instinct starves:--
till on the utmost post, its sinuous gleam
crawls in the oily water of the wharves;

where Homer's sea loses his keen breath, hemm'd

10 what place rebellious piles were driven down--
the priestlike waters to this task condemn'd
to wash the roots of the inhuman town!--

where fat and strange-eyed fish that never saw

the outer deep, broad halls of sapphire light,
15 glut in the city's draught each nameless maw:
and there, wide-eyed unto the soulless night,

methinks a drown'd maid's face might fitly show

what we have slain, a life that had been free,
clean, large, nor thus tormented--even so
20 as are the skies, the salt winds and the sea.

Ay, we had saved our days and kept them whole,

to whom no part in our old joy remains,
had felt those bright winds sweeping thro' our soul
and all the keen sea tumbling in our veins,

25 had thrill'd to harps of sunrise, when the height

whitens, and dawn dissolves in virgin tears,
or caught, across the hush'd ambrosial night,
the choral music of the swinging spheres,

or drunk the silence if nought else--But no!

30 and from each rotting soul distil in dreams
a poison, o'er the old earth creeping slow,
that kills the flowers and curdles the live streams,

that taints the fresh breath of re-risen day

and reeks across the pale bewilder'd moon:
35 --shall we be cleans'd and how? I only pray,
red flame or deluge, may that end be soon!
 SOUL-SICKNESS

II

Ah, who will give us back our long-lost innocence

and tremulous blue within the garden, else untrod
save by the angels' feet, where joys of childish sense
and twin-born hearts went up like morning-praise to God!

5 where we were one with all the glad sun-woven hours

and rapture of golden morn thrill'd thro' our blood and nerve:
--our souls knew nothing more than knew the unheeding flowers
nor their own beauty's law, nor what it was to serve.

But that dark lust to learn and suffer drove us forth:

10 we wearied of the light, of life unvaried, whole;
and seeking have we wandered, south and west and north,
some darker fire to fuse the full-grown sense with soul.

And see! for ages have we dragg'd our long disease

o'er many a hideous street and mouldering sepulchres,
15 till not a capital of towers and blacken'd trees
but reeks with taint of us, drips with our blood and tears.

London or Tarshish, Rome and Paris our delights

have gilded and thereon have soil'd them: first and last,
flush'd with our wine and song, has shudder'd at our nights,
20 and cast us, lepers, out into the ancient waste.

Where grinning deserts hide unhid your skeleton stones,

Tadmor or Nineveh, our pomp has enter'd in:
the Dead Sea rolls more bitter above our blasted bones
and spews upon its shore the unwasted scurf of sin.

25 And what have we at last of all our wandering?

the sadness of the flesh, the languor of the soul,
and this--hard eyes, scarr'd cheeks, lips that forget to sing:
--ah ! we could lay us down and let the deluge roll

our corpses into Lethe's pit--but that a breeze

30 has blown upon our eyes with tidings of the blue
still somewhere: let us bend this once our penitent knees,
then rise and seek for aye the garden that we knew.

Ay, let the cities pile themselves in the red mud,

and flare into the night that hides the offended heaven,
35 and belch their sodden dream of empire, lust and blood,
working in dread ferment of the old hellish leaven,

Psyche! our feet are set towards the eastern star,

our eyes upon the spaces of the morning air;
what tho' the garden goal shine o'er sad seas afar,
40 tho' young hope guide us not, our soul shall not despair.
Enough, we shall have dream'd that solitary emprise,
enough, we shall have been true to our austere thought,
that, if we ne'er behold with longing human eyes
our paradise of yore, sister, we shall have sought.
 DAWN

III

Let us go down, the long dead night is done,

the dolorous incantation has been wrought;
soul, let us go, the saving word is won,
down from the tower of our hermetic thought.

5 See--for the wonder glimmers in the gates,

eager to burst the soundless bars and grace
the wistful earth, that still in blindness waits,
perfect with suffering for her Lord's embrace.

The spaces of the waters of the dawn

10 are spiritual with our transfigured gaze;
the intenser heights of morning, far withdrawn,
expect our dream to shine along their ways.

But speak the word ! and o'er the adoring whole

straight from the marge of the perfected hours
15 sudden, large music through the vast, shall roll
a sea of light foaming with seedless flowers;

lilies that form on some ethereal wave,

still generate of the most ancient blue,
burst roses, rootless, knowing not the grave
20 nor yet the charnel thought by which they grew.

So we shall move at last, untortured powers,

and in white silence hear, as souls unborn,
our hymn given back by the eternal hours
singing together in the eternal morn.
 MISTS

Deep mists of longing blur the land

as in your late October eve:
almost I think your hand might leave
its old caress upon my hand--

5 for sure this floating world of dream

hath touch'd that far reality
of memory's heaven; nor would I deem
the chance a strange one, if to thee

my feet should stray ere fall the night,

10 or, reaching to that lucent shore,
these eyes should wake on tenderer light
to greet the spring and thee once more.
 SEAS

When Summer comes in her glory and brave the whole earth blows,
when colours burn and perfumes impassion the gladden'd air,
then methinks thy laughter seeks me on every breeze that goes
and I feel thy breathing warmth about me everywhere.

5 Or in the dreamy eve, when our soul is spread in the skies,

when Life for an hour is hush'd, and the gaze is wide to behold
what day may not show nor night, then sure it were no surprise
to find thee beside me sitting, the pitying eyes of old.

But ah, when the winter rains drive hard on the blacken'd pane
10 and the grief of the lonely wind is lost in the waste outside,
when the room is high and chill and I seek my place in vain,
I know that seas plash cold in the night and the world is wide.
 SOURCE

And shall the living waters heed

our vain desire, insensate Art!
and fill the common dust I knead
upgather'd from the trodden mart?

5 As well might they forsake their clime

of virgin green and blue, to creep
in cities where our tears are slime,
where our unquicken'd bodies sleep.

--But thou, O soul, hast stood for sure

10 in the far paradisal bower,
there where our passion sparkles pure
beneath the eternal morning hour.

And oft, in twilights listening,

my sleeping memories are stirr'd
15 by lavings of the unstaunched spring
upwelling in a sudden word.

Why shouldst thou come to squander here

the treasure of those deeps on me?
nay, where our fount is free and clear
20 stay there, and let me come to thee!
 BLUE-FLOWER

And does she still perceive, her curtain drawn,

white fields, where maiden Dawn
is anguish'd with the untold approach of joy?
or in the wooing forenoon softly pass
5 where of our little friends
that knew us, girl and boy,
the delicate feather-pinks, each dainty greeting bends
before her step, amid the pale sweet grass?
or warmer flush
10 our poppies with her blush
as the long day of love grows bold for the red kiss
and dreams of bliss
dizzy the brain and awe the youthful blood?
Surely her longing gaze hath call'd them forth
15 the bashful blue-eyed flower-births of the North,
forget-me-nots and violets of the wood,
those maids that slept beneath the snow, and every gracious thing
that glads the spring!
--Ah sweet! but dream me in thy landscape there
20 as I have pictured thee
and I shall rest the long day at thy knee
beneath thy hair:
and Thou and I unconscious of surprise
but innocently quiet and gravely glad
25 and just a little sad
with longing long repress'd,
shall fill with grace each other's welcome eyes
till the shy evening rise
and the streaming lilac-bloom enchant the drowsed air,
30 hushing it soft and warm round pillows press'd
by happy lovers' rest
lost in that timeless hour when breast is joined to breast.
 ROMANCE

Of old, on her terrace at evening

--not here--in some long-gone kingdom
oh, folded close to her breast !

Our gaze dwelt wide on the blackness

5 (was it trees? or a shadowy passion
the pain of an old-world longing
that it sobb'd, that it swell'd, that it shrank?)
--the gloom of the forest
blurr'd soft on the skirt of the night-skies
10 that shut in our lonely world.

Not here--in some long-gone world . .

Close-lock'd in that passionate arm-clasp

no word did we utter, we stirr'd not:
the silence of Death, or of Love.
15 Only, round and over us,
that tearless infinite yearning,
and the Night with her spread wings rustling,
folding us with the stars.

Not here--in some long-gone kingdom

20 of old, on her terrace at evening,
oh, folded close to her heart !
 ERO SICUT DEUS

My heart was wandering in the sands,

a restless thing, a scorn apart;
Love set his fire in my hands,
I clasped the flame unto my heart.

5 Surely, I said, my heart shall turn

one fierce delight of pointed flame;
and in that holocaust shall burn
its old unrest and scorn and shame:

surely my heart the heavens at last

10 shall storm with fiery orisons,
and know, enthroned in the vast,
the fervid peace of molten suns.

The flame that feeds upon my heart

fades or flares, by wild winds controll'd:
15 my heart still walks a thing apart,
my heart is restless as of old.
 THE LONELIEST HOUR

White dawn, that tak'st the heaven with sweet surprise

of amorous artifice,
art thou the bearer of my perfect hour
divine, untrod,
5 from some forgotten window of Paradise
by mighty winds of God
blown down the world, before my haunted eyes
at length to flower?
Nay, virgin dawn, yet art thou all too known,
10 too crowded light
to take my boundless hour of flaming peace:
thou common dayspring cease;
and be there only night, the only night,
more than all other lone:
15 be the sole secret world
one rose unfurl'd,
and nought disturb its blossom'd peace intense,
that fills the living deep beyond all dreams of sense
enmesh'd in errorous multiplicity:
20 --let be
nought but her coming there:
what else were fair?
It asks no golden web, no censer fire
to tell the dense incarnate mystery
25 where one delight is wed with one desire.
No leaves bestrow
that passage to the rose of all fulfill'd delight;
no silver trumpets blow
majestic rite,
30 but silence that is sigh'd from faery lands,
or wraps the feet of Beauty where she treads
dim fields of fading stars,
be round our meeting heads,
and seeking hands:
35 draw near, ye heavens, and be our chamber-bars
and thou, maternal heart of holy night,
close watch, what hush'd and sacramental tide
a soul goes forth wide-eyed,
to meet the archangel-sword of loneliest delight.
 VISION

I saw my life as whitest flame

light leaping in a crystal sky,
and virgin colour where it came
pass'd to its heart, in love to die.

5 It wrapped the world in tender harm

rose-flower'd with one ecstatic pang:
God walk'd amid the hush'd alarm,
and all the trembling region rang

music, whose silver veils dispart

10 around the carven silences
Memnonian in the hidden heart--
now blithe, effulgurant majesties.