I cry to you as I pass your windows in the dusk

I cry to you as I pass your windows in the dusk

Original Text
The Verse of Christopher Brennan, ed. A. R. Chisholm and J. J. Quinn (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1960): 161. PR 6003 R352A17 Robarts Library
1 I cry to you as I pass your windows in the dusk;
2Ye have built you unmysterious homes and ways in the wood
3where of old ye went with sudden eyes to the right and left;
4and your going was now made safe and your staying comforted,
5for the forest edge itself, holding old savagery
6in unsearch'd glooms, was your houses' friendly barrier.
7And now that the year goes winterward, ye thought to hide
8behind your gleaming panes, and where the hearth sings merrily
9make cheer with meat and wine, and sleep in the long night,
10and the uncared wastes might be a crying unhappiness.
11But I, who have come from the outer night, I say to you
12the winds are up and terribly will they shake the dry wood:
13the woods shall awake, hearing them, shall awake to be toss'd and riven,
14and make a cry and a parting in your sleep all night
15as the wither'd leaves go whirling all night along all ways.
16And when ye come forth at dawn, uncomforted by sleep,
17ye shall stand at amaze, beholding all the ways overhidden
18with worthless drift of the dead and all your broken world:
19and ye shall not know whence the winds have come, nor shall ye know
20whither the yesterdays have fled, or if they were.
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; Cameron La Follette
RPO Edition
2011
Form