My Heart Was Wandering in the Sands
MY heart was wandering in the sands,
a restless thing, a scorn apart;
Love set his fire in my hands,
I clasp’d the flame unto my heart.
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
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;
my heart still walks a thing apart,
my heart is restless as of old.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The winter eve is clear and chill
The winter eve is clear and chill:
the world of air is folded still;
the quiet hour expects the moon;
and yon my home awaits me soon
behind the panes that come and go
with dusk and firelight wavering low:
and I must bid the prompting cease
that bids me, in this charmed peace,
— as tho' the hour would last my will —
follow the roads and follow still
the dream that holds my heart in trance
and lures it to the fabled chance
to find, beyond these evening ways,
the morning and the woodland days
and meadows clear with gold, and you
as once, ere I might dare to woo.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I am driven everywhere from a clinging home
I am driven everywhere from a clinging home,
O autumn eves! and I ween'd that you would yet
have made, when your smouldering dwindled to odorous fume,
close room for my heart, where I might crouch and dream
of days and ways I had trod, and look with regret
on the darkening homes of men and the window-gleam,
and forget the morrows that threat and the unknown way.
But a bitter wind came out of the yellow-pale west
and my heart is shaken and fill'd with its triumphing cry:
You shall find neither home nor rest; for ever you roam
with stars as they drift and wilful fates of the sky!
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Pangs That Guard The Gates Of Joy
THE PANGS that guard the gates of joy,
the naked sword that will be kist,
how distant seem’d they to the boy,
white flashes in the rosy mist!
Ah, not where tender play was screen’d
in the light heart of leafy mirth
of that obdurate might we ween’d
that shakes the sure repose of earth.
And sudden, ’twixt a sun and sun,
the veil of dreaming is withdrawn:
lo, our disrupt dominion
and mountains solemn in the dawn;
hard paths that chase the dayspring’s white,
and glooms that hold the nether heat:
oh, strange the world upheaved from night,
oh, dread the life before our feet!
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Quis Pro Domino
Quis Pro Domino?
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay--
Ay' verily: and by ministry of such men
As did His will upon the Saracen:
And Christendom owns not that man today
Who deems it not the holiest task to slay,
So utterly, that they rise not again,
Yon blatant heathenrie, past human ken
Outlawed to death, its raving spawn and prey.
And thou has lit one flame of love and wrath,
Who, all unterrified, didst take thy stand,
And tear the Beast, and baulk him of his spring.
O noble Belgium, lion in the path;
An inch of sword holding a foot of land;
A folk of men, showing a man for King!
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Summer Noon
Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,
and fire made solid in the flinty stone,
thick-massed or scattered pebble, fire that fills
the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.
This valley, long ago the patient bed
of floods that carved 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 hushed 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.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Dies Dominica! the sunshine burns
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.
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,
and the world and the 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,
thro’ flowers and colours, and the visible whole
of beauty mingled in one dream of light.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
An Hour's Respite
An hour's respite; once more the heart may dream:
the thunderwheels of passion thro' the eve,
distantly musical, vaporously agleam,
about my old pain leave
nought but a soft enchantment, vesper fable.
Sweet hour of dream! from the tense height of life
given back to this dear grass and perfumed shade,
across the golden darkness
I feel the simple flowerets where we stray'd
in the clear eves unmix'd with starry strife.
Ah! wilt thou not even now arise,
low-laughing child haunting my old spring ways
and blossom freshly on my freshen'd gaze,
sororal in this hour of tenderness,
an hour of happy hands and clinging eyes —
on silent heartstrings
sweet memory fades in sweet forgetfulness.
poem by Christopher John Brennan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!