Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death

Brennan, Christopher John (1870 - 1932)

Original Text

The Verse of Christopher Brennan, ed. A. R. Chisholm and J. J. Quinn (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1960): 68. PR 6003 R352A17 Robarts Library

1Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death,

2beside its dying sacrificial fire;

3the dim world's middle-age of vain desire

4is strangely troubled, waiting for the breath

6to fix it in the unremembering sleep:

7the silent woods brood o'er an anxious deep,

8and in the faded sorrow of the sun,

9I see my dreams' dead colours, one by one,

10forth-conjur'd from their smouldering palaces,

11fade slowly with the sigh of the passing year.

12They wander not nor wring their hands nor weep,

13discrown'd belated dreams! but in the drear

14and lingering world we sit among the trees

15and bow our heads as they, with frozen mouth,

16looking, in ashen reverie, towards the clear

17sad splendour of the winter of the far south.

5] malison: curse. Back to Line

Publication Start Year

1914

Publication Notes

Poems 1913 (1914). See Australian Poets eTexts Project, The Sydney Electronic Text and Image Service (SETIS)

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire; Marc R. Plamondon

RPO Edition

2011

Rhyme

Form