The Marble Faun and a Green Bough Read online

  When I hear the blackbirds’ song

  Piercing cool and mellowly long,

  I pause to hear, nor do I breathe

  As the dusty gorse and heath

  Breathe not, for their magic call

  Holds all the pausing earth in thrall

  At noon; then I know the skies

  Move not, but halt in reveries

  Of golden-veiled and misty blue;

  Then the blackbirds wheeling through

  By Pan guarded in the skies,

  Piercing the earth with remorseless eyes

  Are burned scraps of paper cast

  On a lake quiet, deep, and vast.

  UPON a wood’s dim shaded edge

  Stands a dusty hawthorn hedge

  Beside a road from which I pass

  To cool my feet in deep rich grass.

  I pause to listen to the song

  Of a brook spilling along

  Behind a patchy willow screen

  Whose lazy evening shadows lean

  Their scattered gold upon a glade

  Through which the staring daisies wade,

  And the resilient poplar trees,

  Slowly turning in the breeze,

  Flash their facets to the sun,

  Swaying in slow unison.

  Here quietude folds a spell

  Within a stilly shadowed dell

  Wherein I rest, and through the leaves

  The sun a soundless pattern weaves

  Upon the floor. The leafy glade

  Is pensive in the dappled shade,

  While the startled sunlight drips

  From beech and alder fingertips,

  And birches springing suddenly

  Erect in silence sleepily

  Clinging to their slender limbs,

  Whitening them as shadow dims.

  As I lie here my fancy goes

  To where a quiet oak bestows

  Its shadow on a dreaming scene

  Over which the broad boughs lean

  A canopy. The brook’s a stream

  On which long still days lie and dream,

  And where the lusty summer walks—

  Around his head are lilac stalks—

  In the shade beneath the trees

  To let the cool stream fold his knees;

  While I lie in the leafy shade

  Until the nymphs troop down the glade.

  Their limbs that in the spring were white

  Are now burned golden by sunlight.

  They near the marge, and there they meet

  Inverted selves stretched at their feet;

  And they kneel languorously there

  To comb and braid their short blown hair

  Before they slip into the pool—

  Warm gold in silver liquid cool.

  Evening turns and sunlight falls

  In flecks between the leafèd walls,

  Like golden butterflies whose wings

  Slowly pulse and beat. Slow sings

  The stream in a lower key

  Murmuring down quietly

  Between its solemn purple stone

  With cooling ivy overgrown.

  Sunset stains the western sky;

  Night comes soon, and now I

  Follow toward the evening star.

  A sheep bell tinkles faint and far,

  Then drips in silence as the sheep

  Move like clouds across the deep

  Still dusky meadows wet with dew.

  I stretch and roll and draw through

  The fresh sweet grass, and the air

  Is softer than my own soft hair.

  I lift up my eyes; the green

  West is a lake on which has been

  Cast a single lily. —See!

  In meadows stretching over me

  Are humming stars as thick as bees,

  And the reaching inky trees

  Sweep the sky. I lie and hear

  The voices of the fecund year,

  While the dark grows dim and deep,

  And I glide into dreamless sleep.

  CAWING rooks in tangled flight

  Come crowding home against the night.

  And all other wings are still

  Except rooks tumbling down the hill

  Of evening sky. The crimson falls

  Upon the solemn ivied walls;

  The horns of sunset slowly sound

  Between the waiting sky and ground;

  The cedars painted on the sky

  Hide the sun slow flamingly

  Repeated level on the lake,

  Smooth and still and without shake,

  Until the swans’ inverted grace

  Wreathes in thought its placid face

  With spreading lines like opening fans

  Moved by white and languid hands.

  Now the vesper song of bells

  Beneath the evening flows and swells,

  And the twilight’s silver throat

  Slowly repeats each resonant note:

  The dying day gives those who sorrow

  A boon no king can give: a morrow.

  The westering sun has climbed the wall

  And silently we watch night fall

  While sunset lingers in the trees

  Its subtle gold-shot tapestries,

  The sky is velvet overhead

  Where petalled stars are canopied

  Like sequins in a spreading train

  Without fold or break or stain.

  A cool wind whispers by the heads

  Of flowers dreaming in their beds

  Like convent girls, filling their sleep

  With strange dreams from the outer deep.

  On every hill battalioned trees

  March skyward on unmoving knees,

  And like a spider on a veil

  Climbs the moon. A nightingale,

  Lost in the trees against the sky,

  Loudly repeats its jewelled cry.

  I AM sad, nor yet can I,

  For all my questing, reason why;

  And now as night falls I will go

  Where two breezes joining flow

  Above a stream whose gleamless deeps

  Caressingly sing the while it sleeps

  Upon sands powdered by the moon.

  And there I’ll lie to hear it croon

  In fondling a wayward star

  Fallen from the shoreless far

  Sky, while winds in misty stream,

  Laughing and weeping in a dream,

  Whisper of an orchard’s trees

  That, shaken by the aimless breeze,

  Let their blossoms fade and slip

  Soberly, as lip to lip

  They touch the misty grasses fanned

  To ripples by the breeze.

  Here stand

  The clustered lilacs faint as cries

  Against the silken-breasted skies;

  They nod and sway, and slow as rain

  Their slowly falling petals stain

  The grass as through them breezes stray,

  Smoothing them in silver play.

  And we, the marbles in the glade,

  Dreaming in the leafy shade

  Are saddened, for we know that all

  Things save us must fade and fall,

  And the moon that sits there in the skies

  Draws her hair across her eyes:

  She sees the blossoms blow and die,

  Soberly and quietly,

  Till spring breaks in the waiting glade

  And the first thin branchèd shade

  Falls ’thwart them, and the swallows’ cry

  Calls down from the stirring sky,

  Thin and cold and hot as flame

  Where spring is nothing but a name.

  The stream flows calmly without sound

  In the darkness gathered round;

  Trembling to the vagrant breeze

  About me stand the inky trees

  Peopled by some bird’s loud cries,

  Until it se
ems as if the skies

  Had shaken down their blossomed stars

  Seeking among the trees’ dim bars,

  Crying aloud, each for its mate,

  About the old earth, insensate,

  Seemingly, to their white woe,

  But their sorrow does she know

  And her breast, unkempt and dim,

  Throbs her sorrow out to them.

  The dying day gives all who sorrow

  The boon no king may give: a morrow.

  THE ringèd moon sits eerily

  Like a mad woman in the sky,

  Dropping flat hands to caress

  The far world’s shaggy flanks and breast,

  Plunging white hands in the glade

  Elbow deep in leafy shade

  Where birds sleep in each silent brake

  Silverly, there to wake

  The quivering loud nightingales

  Whose cries like scattered silver sails

  Spread across the azure sea.

  Her hands also caress me:

  My keen heart also does she dare;

  While turning always through the skies

  Her white feet mirrored in my eyes

  Weave a snare about my brain

  Unbreakable by surge or strain,

  For the moon is mad, for she is old,

  And many’s the bead of a life she’s told;

  And many’s the fair one she’s seen wither:

  They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

  The hushèd earth, so calm, so old,

  Dreams beneath its heath and wold—

  And heavy scent from thorny hedge

  Paused and snowy on the edge

  Of some dark ravine, from where

  Mists as soft and thick as hair

  Float silver in the moon.

  Stars sweep down—or are they stars?—

  Against the pines’ dark etchèd bars.

  Along a brooding moon-wet hill

  Dogwood shines so cool and still,

  Like hands that, palm up, rigid lie

  In invocation to the sky

  As they spread there, frozen white,

  Upon the velvet of the night.

  THE world is still. How still it is!

  About my avid stretching ears

  The earth is pulseless in the dim

  Silence that flows into them

  And forms behind my eyes, until

  My head is full: I feel it spill

  Like water down my breast. The world,

  A muted violin where are curled

  Pan’s fingers, waits, supine and cold

  And bound soundlessly in fold

  On fold of blind calm rock

  Edgeless in the moonlight’s shock,

  Until the hand that grasps the bow

  Descends; then grave and strong and low

  It rises to his waiting ears.

  The music of all passing years

  Flows over him and down his breast

  Of ice and gold, as in the west

  Sunsets flame, and all dawns burn

  Eastwardly, and calm skies turn

  Always about his frozen head:

  Peace for living, peace for dead.

  And the hand that draws the bow

  Stops not, as grave and strong and low

  About his cloudy head it curls

  The endless sorrow of all worlds,

  The while he bends dry stricken eyes

  Above the throngs; perhaps he sighs

  For all the full world watching him

  As seasons change from bright to dim.

  And my eyes too are cool with tears

  For the stately marching years,

  For old earth dumb and strong and sad

  With life so willy-nilly clad,

  And mute and impotent like me

  Who marble bound must ever be;

  And my carven eyes embrace

  The dark world’s dumbly dreaming face,

  For my crooked limbs have pressed

  Her all-wise pain-softened breast

  Until my hungry heart is full

  Of aching bliss unbearable.

  THE hills are resonant with soft humming;

  It is a breeze that pauses, strumming

  On the golden-wirèd stars

  The deep full music to which was

  The song of life through ages sung;

  And soundlessly there weaves among

  The chords a star, a falling rose

  That only this high garden grows;

  A falling hand with beauty dumb

  Stricken by the hands that strum

  The sky, is gone: yet still I see

  This hand swiftly and soundlessly

  Sliding now across my eyes

  As it then slid down the skies.

  Soft the breeze, a steady flame

  Cooled by the forest whence it came,

  Slipping across the dappled lea

  To climb the dim walls of the sea;

  To comb the wave-ponies’ manes back

  Where the water shivers black

  With quiet depth and solitude

  And licks the caverned sky. The wood

  Stirs to a faint far mystic tone:

  The reed of Pan who, all alone

  In some rock-chilled silver dell,

  Thins the song of Philomel

  Sad in her dark dim echoed bower

  Watching the far world bud and flower,

  Watching the moon in ether stilled

  Who, with her broad face humped and hilled

  In sleep, dreams naked in the air

  While Philomel dreams naked here.

  Clear and sad sounds Pan’s thin strain,

  Dims in mystery, grows again;

  Mirrors the light limbs falling, dying,

  Soothes night voices calling, crying,

  Stills the winds’ far seeking tone

  Where fallow springs have died and grown;

  Hushes the nightbirds’ jewelled cries

  And flames the shadows’ subtleties

  Through endless labyrinthine walls

  Of sounding corridors and halls

  Where sound and silence soundless keep

  Their slumbrous noon. Sweet be their sleep.

  ALL day I run before a wind,

  Keen and blue and without end,

  Like a fox before the hounds

  Across the mellow sun-shot downs

  That smell like crispened warm fresh bread;

  And the sky stretched overhead

  Has drawn across its face a veil

  Of gold and purple. My limbs fail

  And I plunge panting down to rest

  Upon earth’s sharp and burning breast.

  I lie flat, and feel its cold

  Beating heart that’s never old,

  And yet has felt the ages pass

  Above its heather, trees, and grass.

  The azure veils fall from the sky

  And on the world’s rim shimmering lie,

  While the bluely flashing sea

  Pulses through infinitely.

  Up! Away! Now I will go

  To some orchard’s golden row

  Of bursting mellow pears and sweet

  Berries and dusky grapes to eat.

  I singing crush them to my lips,

  Staining cheek and fingertips,

  Then fill my hands, I know not why,

  And off again along the sky

  Down through the trees, beside the stream

  Veiled too, and golden as a dream,

  To lie once more in some warm glade

  Deep walled by the purple shade

  My fruits beside, and so I lie

  In thin sun sifting from the sky

  Like a cloak to cover me:

  I sink in sleep resistlessly

  While the sun slides smoothly down

  The west, and green dusk closes round

  My glade that the sun filled up

  As gold wine sta
nds within a cup.

  Now silent autumn fires the trees

  To slow flame, and calmly sees

  The changing days burn down the skies

  Reflected in her quiet eyes,

  While about her as she kneels

  Crouch the heavy-fruited fields

  Along whose borders poplars run

  Burnished by the waning sun.

  Vineyards struggle up the hill

  Toward the sky, dusty and still,

  Thick with heavy purple grapes

  And golden bursting fruits whose shapes

  Are full and hot with sun. Here each

  Slow exploding oak and beech

  Blaze up about her dreaming knees,

  Flickering at her draperies.

  Each covert, a blaze of light

  Upon horizons blueish white

  Is a torch, the pines are bronze

  And stiffly stretch their sculptured fronds

  Over the depthless hushed ravine

  Wherein their shadows change to green,

  Then to purple in the deeps

  Where the waiting winter sleeps.

  THE moon is mad, and dimly burns,

  And with her prying fingers turns

  Inside out thicket and copse

  Curiously, and then she stops

  Staring about her, and the down

  Grows sharp in sadness gathering round,

  Powdering each darkling rock

  And the hunchèd grain in shock

  On shock in solemn rows;

  And after each a shadow goes

  Staring skyward, listening

  Into the silence glistening

  With watching stars that, sharp and sad,

  Ring the solemn staring mad

  Moon; and winds in monotone

  Brood where shaken grain had grown

  In bloomless fields that raise their bare

  Breasts against the dying year.

  And yet I do not move, for I

  Am sad beneath this autumn sky,

  For I am sudden blind and chill

  Here beneath my frosty hill,

  And I cry moonward in stiff pain

  Unheeded, for the moon again

  Stares blandly, while beneath her eyes

  The silent world blazes and dies,

  And leaves slip down and cover me

  With sorrow and desire to be—

  While the world waits, cold and sere—

  Like it, dead with the dying year.

  THE world stands without move or sound

  In this white silence gathered round

  It like a hood. It is so still

  That earth lies without wish or will

  To breathe. My garden, stark and white,

  Sits soundless in the falling light