The Marble Faun and a Green Bough Read online

  The Marble Faun, Copyright, 1924, by The Four Seas Company, and Renewed 1952, by William Faulkner.

  A Green Bough, Copyright, 1933, and Renewed 1960, by William Faulkner.

  FIRST RANDOM HOUSE EDITION

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Limited.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-87380-4

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-27492

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Publisher’s Note

  The Marble Faun Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Prologue

  First Page

  Epilogue

  A Green Bough Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Other Books by This Author

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Faulkner’s two volumes of poetry are here reproduced photographically from copies of the original editions.

  The Marble Faun was issued on December 15, 1924, by The Four Seas Company (Boston), with an introduction by Phil Stone.

  A Green Bough was published on April 20, 1933, by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas (New York). There was a limited signed edition of 360 copies, as well as the regular trade edition.

  THE MARBLE FAUN

  Copyright, 1924, by

  THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY

  THE FOUR SEAS PRESS

  BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A.

  To My Mother

  PREFACE

  THESE are primarily the poems of youth and a simple heart. They are the poems of a mind that reacts directly to sunlight and trees and skies and blue hills, reacts without evasion or self-consciousness. They are drenched in sunlight and color as is the land in which they were written, the land which gave birth and sustenance to their author. He has roots in this soil as surely and inevitably as has a tree.

  They are the poems of youth. One has to be at a certain age to write poems like these. They belong inevitably to that period of uncertainty and illusion. They are as youthful as cool spring grass.

  They also have the defects of youth—youth’s impatience, unsophistication and immaturity. They have youth’s sheer joy at being alive in the sun and youth’s sudden, vague, unreasoned sadness over nothing at all.

  It is seldom that much can be truthfully said for a first book beyond that it shows promise. And I think these poems show promise. They have an unusual feeling for words and the music of words, a love of soft vowels, an instinct for color and rhythm, and—at times—a hint of coming muscularity of wrist and eye.

  The author of these poems is a man steeped in the soil of his native land, a Southerner by every instinct, and, more than that, a Mississippian. George Moore said that all universal art became great by first being provincial, and the sunlight and mocking-birds and blue hills of North Mississippi are a part of this young man’s very being.

  He is a man of varied outdoor experience, of wide reading, of quick humor, of the usual Southern alertness and flexibility of imagination, deeply schooled in the poets and their technical trials and accomplishments, and—above all—of rigid self-honesty. It is inevitable that this book should bear traces of other poets; probably all well-informed people have by this time learned that a poet does not spring full-fledged from the brow of Jove. He does have to be born with the native impulse, but he learns his trade from other poets by apprenticeship, just as a lawyer or a carpenter or a bricklayer learns his. It is inevitable that traces of apprenticeship should appear in a first book but a man who has real talent will grow, will leave these things behind, will finally bring forth a flower that could have grown in no garden but his own. All that is needed—granted the original talent—is work and unflinching honesty.

  On one of our long walks through the hills, I remarked that I thought the main trouble with Amy Lowell and her gang of drum-beaters was their eternal damned self-consciousness, that they always had one eye on the ball and the other eye on the grandstand. To which the author of these poems replied that his personal trouble as a poet seemed to be that he had one eye on the ball and the other eye on Babe Ruth. Surely there must be possibilities inherent in a mind so shrewdly and humorously honest.

  PHIL STONE

  Oxford, Mississippi

  September 23, 1924

  PROLOGUE

  The poplar trees sway to and fro

  That through this gray old garden go

  Like slender girls with nodding heads,

  Whispering above the beds

  Of tall tufted hollyhocks,

  Of purple asters and of phlox;

  Caught in the daisies’ dreaming gold

  Recklessly scattered wealth untold

  About their slender graceful feet

  Like poised dancers, lithe and fleet.

  The candled flames of roses here

  Gutter gold in this still air,

  And clouds glide down the western sky

  To watch this sun-drenched revery,

  While the poplars’ shining crests

  Lightly brush their silvered breasts,

  Dreaming not of winter snows

  That soon will shake their maiden rows.

  The days dream by, golden-white,

  About the fountain’s silver light

  That lifts and shivers in the breeze

  Gracefully slim as are the trees;

  Then shakes down its glistered hair

  Upon the still pool’s mirrored, fair

  Flecked face.

  Why am I sad? I?

  Why am I not content? The sky

  Warms me and yet I cannot break

  My marble bonds. That quick keen snake

  Is free to come and go, while I

  Am prisoner to dream and sigh

  For things I know, yet cannot know,

  ’Twixt sky above and earth below.

  The spreading earth calls to my feet

  Of orchards bright with fruits to eat,

  Of hills and streams on either hand;

  Of sleep at night on moon-blanched sand:

  The whole world breathes and calls to me

  Who marble-bound must ever be.

  IF I were free, then I would go

  Where the first chill spring winds blow,

  Wrapping a light shocked mountain’s brow
r />   With shrilling tongues, and swirling now,

  And fiery upward flaming, leap

  From craggy teeth above each deep

  Cold and wet with silence. Here

  I fly before the streaming year

  Along the fierce cold mountain tops

  To which the sky runs down and stops;

  And with the old moon watching me

  Leaping and shouting joyously

  Along each crouching dark abyss

  Through which waters rush and hiss,

  I whirl the echoes west and east

  To hover each copse where lurks the beast,

  Silence, till they shatter back

  Across the ravine’s smoky crack.

  Here Pan’s sharp hoofed feet have pressed

  His message on the chilly crest,

  Saying—Follow where I lead,

  For all the world springs to my reed

  Woven up and woven down,

  Thrilling all the sky and ground

  With shivering heat and quivering cold;

  To pierce and burst the swollen mold;

  Shrilling in each waiting brake:

  Come, ye living, stir and wake!

  As the tumbling sunlight falls

  Spouting down the craggy walls

  To hiss upon the frozen rocks

  That dot the hills in crouching flocks,

  So I plunge in some deep vale

  Where first violets, shy and pale,

  Appear, and spring with tear-stained cheeks

  Peeps at me from the neighboring brakes,

  Gathering her torn draperies up

  For flight if I cast my eyes up.

  Swallows dart and skimming fly

  Like arrows painted on the sky,

  And the twanging of the string

  Is the faint high quick crying

  That they, downward shooting, spin

  Through the soundless swelling din.

  Dogwood shines through thin trees there

  Like jewels in a woman’s hair;

  A sudden brook hurries along

  Singing its reverted song,

  Flashing in white frothèd shocks

  About upstanding polished rocks;

  Slender shoots draw sharp and clear

  And white withes shake as though in fear

  Upon the quick stream’s melted snow

  That seems to dance rather than flow.

  Then on every hand awakes

  From the dim and silent brakes

  The breathing of the growing things,

  The living silence of all springs

  To come and that have gone before;

  And upon a woodland floor

  I watch the sylvans dance till dawn

  While the brooding spring looks on.

  The spring is quick with child, and sad;

  And in her dampened hair sits clad

  Watching the immortal dance

  To the world’s throbbing dissonance

  That Pan’s watchful shrill pipes blow

  Of the fiery days that go

  Like wine across the world; then high:

  His pipes weave magic on the sky

  Shrill with joy and pain of birth

  Of another spring on earth.

  HARK! a sound comes from the brake

  And I glide nearer like a snake

  To peer into its leafy deeps

  Where like a child the spring still sleeps.

  Upon a chill rock gray and old

  Where the willows’ simple fold

  Falls, an unstirred curtain, Pan—

  As he sat since the world began—

  Stays and broods upon the scene

  Beside a hushèd pool where lean

  His own face and the bending sky

  In shivering soundless amity.

  Pan sighs, and raises to his lips

  His pipes, down which his finger-tips

  Wander lovingly; then low

  And clearly simple does he blow

  A single thin clear melody

  That pauses, spreading liquidly,

  While the world stands sharp and mute

  Waiting for his magic flute.

  A sudden strain, silver and shrill

  As narrow water down a hill,

  Splashes rippling as though drawn

  In shattered quicksilver on

  The willow curtain, and through which

  It wanders without halt or hitch

  Into silent meadows; when

  It pauses, breathing, and again

  Climbs as though to reach the sky

  Like the soaring silver cry

  Of some bird. A note picks out,

  A silver moth that whirrs about

  A single rose, then settles low

  On the sorrowful who go

  Along a willowed green-stained pool

  To lie and sleep within its cool

  Virginity.

  Ah, the world

  About which mankind’s dreams are furled

  Like a cocoon, thin and cold,

  And yet that is never old!

  Earth’s heart burns with winter snows

  As fond and tremulous Pan blows

  For other springs and cold and sad

  As this; and sitting garment-clad

  In sadness with dry stricken eyes

  Bent to the unchanging skies,

  Pan sighs and broods upon the scene

  Beside this hushèd pool where lean

  His own face and the bending sky

  In shivering soundless amity.

  ALL the air is gray with rain

  Above the shaken fields of grain,

  Cherry orchards moveless drip

  Listening to their blossoms slip

  Quietly from wet black boughs.

  There a soaking broad-thatched house

  Steams contemplatively. I

  Sit beneath the weeping sky

  Crouched about the mountains’ rim

  Drawing her loose hair over them.

  My eyes, peace-filled by falling rain,

  Brood upon the steamy plain,

  Crouched beneath a dripping tree

  Where strong and damp rise up to me

  The odors of the bursting mold

  Upon the earth’s slow-breathing old

  Breast; of acorns swelling tight

  To thrust green shoots into the light

  As shade for me in years to come

  When my eyes grow dim and I am dumb

  With sun-soaked age and lack of strength

  Of things that have lived out the length

  Of life; and when the nameless pain

  To fuller live and know again

  No more will send me over earth

  Puzzling about the worth

  Of this and that, nor crying “Hence!”

  At my unseeking impotence

  To have about my eyes close-furled

  All the beauty in the world.

  But content to watch by day

  The dancing light’s unthinking play

  Ruffling the pool. Then I’ll be

  Beneath the roses. sleepily

  Soaking in the sun-drenched air

  Without wish or will or care,

  With my softened fading eyes

  Shackled to the curving skies.

  THE poplars look beyond the wall

  With bending hair, and to me call,

  Curving shivering hands to me

  Whispering what they can see:

  Of a dim and silent way

  Through a valley white with may.

  On either hand gossiping beeches

  Stir against the lilac reaches

  Half of earth and half of sky;

  There the aspens quakingly

  Gather in excited bands,

  The dappled birches’ fluttering hands

  Cast their swift and silver light

  Through the glade spun greenish white.

  So alone I follow on


  Where slowly piping Pan has gone

  To draw the quiet browsing flocks,

  While a blackbird calls and knocks

  At noon across the dusty downs

  In quivering peace, until Pan sounds

  His piping gently to the bird,

  And saving this no sound is heard.

  Now the blackbirds’ gold wired throats

  Spill their long cool mellow notes;

  In solemn flocks slowly wheeling

  Intricately, without revealing

  Their desires, as on blue space

  They thread and cross like folds of lace

  Woven black; then shrilling go

  Like shutters swinging to and fro.

  ON the downs beyond the trees

  Loved by the thrilling breeze,

  While the blackbird calls and knocks

  Go the shepherds with their flocks.

  It is noon, and the air

  Is shimmering still, for nowhere

  Is there a sound. The sky, half waked,

  Half sleep, is calm; for peace is laked

  Between the world rim’s far spread dikes

  And the trees, from which there strikes

  The flute notes that I, listening, hear

  Liquidly falling on my ear:

  “Come quietly, Faun, to my call;

  Come, come, the noon will cool and pass

  That now lies edgelessly in thrall

  Upon the ripened sun-stilled grass.

  “There is no sound in all the land,

  There is no breath in all the skies;

  Here Warmth and Peace go hand in hand

  ’Neath Silence’s inverted eyes.

  “My call, spreading endlessly,

  My mellow call pulses and knocks;

  Come, Faun, and solemnly

  Float shoulderward your autumned locks.

  “Let your fingers, languorous,

  Slightly curl, palm upward rest,

  The silent noon waits over us,

  The feathers stir not on his breast.

  “There is no sound nor shrill of pipe,

  Your feet are noiseless on the ground;

  The earth is full and stillily ripe,

  In all the land there is no sound.

  “There is a great God who sees all

  And in my throat bestows this boon:

  To ripple the silence with my call

  When the world sleeps and it is noon.”