Christopher John Brennan Quotes

• “Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her
  
  If questioning would make us wise
  No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
  If all our tale were told in speech
  No mouths would wander each to each.
  
  Were spirits free from mortal mesh
  And love not bound in hearts of flesh
  No aching breasts would yearn to meet
  And find their ecstasy complete.
  
  For who is there that lives and knows
  The secret powers by which he grows?
  Were knowledge all, what were our need
  To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?
  
  Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"
  I love you now until I die.
  For I must love because I live
  And life in me is what you give.”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “Fire
  Fire In The Heavens
  
  Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,
  and fire made solid in the flinty stone,
  thick-mass'd or scatter'd pebble, fire that fills
  the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.
  
  This valley, long ago the patient bed
  of floods that carv'd its antient amplitude,
  in stillness of the Egyptian crypt outspread,
  endures to drown in noon-day's tyrant mood.
  
  Behind the veil of burning silence bound,
  vast life's innumerous busy littleness
  is hush'd in vague-conjectured blur of sound
  that dulls the brain with slumbrous weight, unless
  
  some dazzling puncture let the stridence throng
  in the cicada's torture-point of song.”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “Autumn
  
  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
  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,
  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
  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.
  
  
  Christopher John Brennan”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “Fire In The Heavens
  
  Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,
  and fire made solid in the flinty stone,
  thick-mass'd or scatter'd pebble, fire that fills
  the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.
  
  This valley, long ago the patient bed
  of floods that carv'd its antient amplitude,
  in stillness of the Egyptian crypt outspread,
  endures to drown in noon-day's tyrant mood.
  
  Behind the veil of burning silence bound,
  vast life's innumerous busy littleness
  is hush'd in vague-conjectured blur of sound
  that dulls the brain with slumbrous weight, unless
  
  some dazzling puncture let the stridence throng
  in the cicada's torture-point of song.”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “Four Springtimes Lost: And In The Fifth We Stand
  
  Four springtimes lost: and in the fifth we stand,
  here in this quiet hour of glory, still,
  while o'er the bridal land
  the westering sun dwells in untroubled gold,
  a bridegroom proud of his permitted will,
  whom grateful rapture suffers not be bold,
  but tender now and bland
  his amber locks and bended gaze are shed,
  brimming, above the couch'd and happy clime:
  all is content and ripe delight, full-fed.
  And as your fingers brush my hand
  so too the winning time
  would charm me from regretful reverie
  that keeps me somewhat sad, remembering —
  not the old woodland days, for thou art near
  and hold'st them safely hid
  to rise and shine again, when waning skies shall bid —
  but later dawns o' the year, away from thee
  liv'd thro', even here,
  and golden embraces of the light-hearted time
  when I was sad at heart, remembering
  the clear enchantments of our single year,
  our woodland prime of love, its violet-budded vow,
  receding ever now
  farther and farther down the past, a gleam
  that turns to softest pearl the luminous haze
  drifting between in from the golden days
  when I was sad at inmost heart, remembering
  thee and the woodland season of bright laughter: —
  so in my perverse and most loitering dream
  (O fading, fading days!)
  each season claims the homage due, long after
  its glory has faded to an outcast thing.”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “White Dawn, That Tak'st The Heaven With Sweet Surprise
  
  White dawn, that tak'st the heaven with sweet surprise
  of amorous artifice,
  art thou the bearer of my perfect hour
  divine, untrod,
  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,
  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:
  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:
  — 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
  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,
  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:
  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”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “Said, This Misery Must End
  
  I SAID, This misery must end:
  Shall I, that am a man and know
  that sky and wind are yet my friend,
  sit huddled under any blow?
  so speaking left the dismal room
  and stept into the mother-night
  all fill’d with sacred quickening gloom
  where the few stars burn’d low and bright,
  and darkling on my darkling hill
  heard thro’ the beaches’ sullen boom
  heroic note of living will
  rung trumpet-clear against the fight;
  so stood and heard, and rais’d my eyes
  erect, that they might drink of space,
  and took the night upon my face,
  till time and trouble fell away
  and all my soul sprang up to feel
  as one among the stars that reel
  in rhyme on their rejoicing way,
  breaking the elder dark, nor stay
  but speed beyond each trammelling gyre,
  till time and sorrow fall away
  and night be wither’d up, and fire
  consume the sickness of desire.”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “How Old Is My Heart, How Old?
  
  How old is my heart, how old, how old is my heart,
  and did I ever go forth with song when the morn was new?
  I seem to have trod on many ways: I seem to have left
  I know not how many homes; and to leave each
  was still to leave a portion of mine own heart,
  of my old heart whose life I had spent to make that home
  and all I had was regret, and a memory.
  
  So I sit and muse in this wayside harbour and wait
  till I hear the gathering cry of the ancient winds and again
  I must up and out and leave the members of the hearth
  to crumble silently into white ash and dust,
  and see the road stretch bare and pale before me: again
  my garment and my house shall be the enveloping winds
  and my heart be fill'd wholly with their old pitiless cry”

  Christopher John Brennan

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• “I Am Shut Out Of Mine Own Heart
  
  I am shut out of mine own heart
  because my love is far from me,
  nor in the wonders have I part
  that fill its hidden empery:
  
  the wildwood of adventurous thought
  and lands of dawn my dream had won,
  the riches out of Faery brought
  are buried with our bridal sun.
  
  And I am in a narrow place,
  and all its little streets are cold,
  because the absence of her face
  has robb'd the sullen air of gold.
  
  My home is in a broader day:
  at times I catch it glistening
  thro' the dull gate, a flower'd play
  and odour of undying spring:
  
  the long days that I lived alone,
  sweet madness of the springs I miss'd,
  are shed beyond, and thro' them blown
  clear laughter, and my lips are kiss'd:
  
  - and here, from mine own joy apart,
  I wait the turning of the key: -
  I am shut out of mine own heart
  because my love is far from me”

  Christopher John Brennan

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