Sweet Silence After Bells is a poem by the Australian Symbolist poet Christopher Brennan. Symbolism was a poetic movement that developed in France in the late 1800’s. The Symbolist poets used unique new combinations of sound and images. Brennan studied in Germany in the early 1890’s, where he read and was influenced by the work of the French Symbolists, especially Stephané Mallarmé. Brennan returned to Australia with his own mystical, Symbolist philosophy.
“Sweet Silence After Bells” was published in 1914 in Brennan’s collection Poems 1913. It was one of a long sequence of poems that combine to develop symbolical meaning in complex and often abstract ways. “Sweet Silence After Bells” considers the philosophical puzzle of musical sound, which continues to be heard in the “silence” of the mind afterward.
Sweet silence after bells! deep in the enamour’d ear soft incantation dwells. Filling the rapt still sphere a liquid crystal swims, precarious yet clear. Those metal quiring hymns shaped ether so succinct: a while, or it dislimns, the silence, wanly prinkt with forms of lingering notes, inhabits, close, distinct; and night, the angel, floats on wings of blessing spread o’er all the gather’d cotes where meditation, wed with love, in gold-lit cells, absorbs the heaven that shed sweet silence after bells.
In this poem, Brennan follows the Symbolist practice of trying to produce the effect of music in verse. The “soft incantation” of music in the mind is suggested in the use of gentle rhythms and rhymes that have a soft chiming effect. Unusual words, such as quiring (folding; quire also means choir), dislimns (to blot out), and prinkt (decorated, also suggestive of plink), show the poet’s concern for the sounds of the poem. But the poem gradually moves toward its own silence, creating an image of night as a heavenly angel encompassing the mind’s peace.
Brennan was a classical scholar with a strong religious background. After losing his Roman Catholic faith while a university student, Brennan pursued an alternative spiritual quest for meaning through his poetry. The life and countryside of Australia never became central concerns for him. His interests lay in mystical and suggestive words and images, rather than in the everyday language and experiences of ordinary people. His approach was intellectual and personal. As a result, his poetry is often difficult and less approachable than the work of more popular writers. But his importance to the development of Australian literature is considerable. His work has been the subject of many critical studies and continues to present new possibilities for meaning.
