The Guest House

What imps are these that come with scowl and leer?
Black motes upon the mornings amber beam,
They crowd and float about each happy dream
And blow upon pure joy the taint of fear.
Perforce those muttered hideous words we hear,
Yet bid our nobler nature rise supreme
And, sunlike, dry to naught th infernal steam
Till all our day is luminous and clear.
What cruel beasts find refuge in the soul
Amid the murky deep of sightless flame
Whose waves are flattend by a rain of blood!
Nay, but however pure the waters roll,
The offal thrown therein will rise and shame
Their glittering pride with bubbles from the mud.

John Le Gay Brereton

John Le Gay Brereton was an Australian poet, critic, and professor of English who was born on September 2, 1871, and died on February 2, 1933. He is best known for his association with the Bulletin school of Australian poetry and for promoting Australian literature. Brereton's contributions to poetry and literary criticism made him a significant figure in early 20th-century Australian literature. His academic career also included a long tenure at the University of Sydney.

John Le Gay Brereton

Belgium

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

Unborn

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

Light Loss

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

Toby

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

English

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Gaming

In faded chairs, the pale old courtesans,
Eyebrows painted, eye of fatal calm,
Smirking, and letting drop from skinny ears
Those jingling sounds of metal and of stone;

Around green cloth, the faces without lips,
Lips without colour over toothless jaws,
And fingers twisted by infernal fires,
Digging in pockets, or in panting breast;

Under the filthy ceilings, chandeliers
And lamps of oil doling out their glow
Over the brilliant poets' gloomy brows,
Who come to squander here their bloody sweat;

This is the black tableau that in my dream
I see unroll before my prescient eye.
There in an idle corner of that den
I see myself-cold, mute, and envying,

Envious of these men's tenacious lust,
The morbid gaiety of these old whores,
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What Of The Night?

The doom is imminent of unholy hate.
Hail to the light that glimmers where the leaves
Are shaken by winds of dawning, and the sheaves
Of hemlock swirl and scatter in the spate!
Love, that has learned in faith to sorrow and wait,
Sings loud his glorious charm and subtly weaves
The spell subduing madness that receives
The madman at his own mad estimate.

Ah, but the ponderous horror! Nay, not yet
The cloud of sorrow leeward growls and rolls;
The eyes that meet the morn are heavy and wet.
The loss the military mind enscrolls,
Spilt blood and battered bones, we may forget,
But not the wastage of beloved souls

John Le Gay Brereton

Evening Twilight

Heres the criminals friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolfs loping:
slowly the skys vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.

Evening, sweet evening, desired by him who can say
without his arms proving him a liar: Today
weve worked!  It refreshes, this evening hour,
those spirits that savage miseries devour,
the dedicated scholar with heavy head,
the bowed workman stumbling home to bed.
Yet now unhealthy demons rise again
clumsily, in the air, like busy men,
beat against sheds and arches in their flight.
And among the wind-tormented gas-lights
Prostitution switches on through the streets
opening her passageways like an ant-heap:
weaving her secret tunnels everywhere,
like an enemy pl...

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The Grey Tide

The cold green rocks and lapping waves
Are all my world as here I sit
With downcast eye and heart that craves
The bush and blue sky over it.

The tide of years is washing by,
The misty water drifts between
A soul with wings that may not fly
And shadowy realms that might have been.

Too late, too late, alas, I know
The track that winds by shining leaves
From where the flood reflects, below,
The greyness of the heart that grieves.

Another yet may tread the way,
And offer at that hidden shrine
His gift of rolled and twisted clay,
And set his lips to holy wine.

Another yet may tinge the flame
Upon that altar blue or red,
And freely call upon Her name,
And taste at will the blessed bread.

The waves are grey about the ...

John Le Gay Brereton

Next Morning

How have I wandered here to this vaulted room
In the house of life? - the floor was ruffled with gold
Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,
Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight unfold

For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom
Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,
And damp old web of misery's heirloom
Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold.

And what is this that floats on the undermist
Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling
Unsightly its way to the warmth? - this thing with a list
To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?

Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it missed
Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing
Upon me! - my own reflection! - explicit gist
Of my presence th...

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The Game

Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes tender, fatal,
simpering still, and from their skinny ears
loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal:


Round the green baize, faces without lips,
lips without blood, jaws without the rest,
clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips,
fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast:


below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights,
and huge candelabras shed their glimmer,
across the brooding brows of famous poets:
here its their blood and sweat they squander:


this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream
my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold.
In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned
hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold,


yes, envying that crews ten...

Charles Baudelaire