The Marble Faun and a Green Bough

  Of lifting bush and sudden hedge

  Ice bound and ghostly on the edge

  Of my world, curtained by the snow

  Drifting, sifting; fast, now slow;

  Falling endlessly from skies

  Calm and gray, some far god’s eyes.

  The soundless quiet flakes slide past

  Like teardrops on a sheet of glass,

  Ah, there is some god above

  Whose tears of pity, pain, and love

  Slowly freeze and brimming slow

  Upon my chilled and marbled woe;

  The pool, sealed now by ice and snow,

  Is dreaming quietly below,

  Within its jewelled eye keeping

  The mirrored skies it knew in spring.

  How soft the snow upon my face!

  And delicate cold! I can find grace

  In its endless quiescence

  For my enthrallèd impotence:

  Solace from a pitying breast

  Bringing quietude and rest

  To dull my eyes; and sifting slow

  Upon the waiting earth below

  Fold veil on veil of peacefulness

  Like wings to still and keep and bless.

  WHY cannot we always be

  Left steeped in this immensity

  Of softly stirring peaceful gray

  That follows on the dying day?

  Here I can drug my prisoned woe

  In the night wind’s sigh and flow,

  But now we, who would dream at night,

  Are awakened by the light

  Of paper lanterns, in whose glow

  Fantastically to and fro

  Pass, in a loud extravagance

  And reft of grace, yet called a dance,

  Dancers in a blatant crowd

  To brass horns horrible and loud.

  The blaring beats on gustily

  From every side. Must I see

  Always this unclean heated thing

  Debauching the unarmèd spring

  While my back I cannot turn,

  Nor may not shut these eyes that burn?

  The poplars shake and sway with fright

  Uncontrollable, the night

  Powerless in ruthless grasp

  Lifts hidden hands as though to clasp,

  In invocation for surcease,

  The flying stars.

  Once there was peace

  Calm handed where the roses blow,

  And hyacinths, straight row on row;

  And hushed among the trees. What!

  Has my poor marble heart forgot

  This surging noise in dreams of peace

  That it once thought could never cease

  Nor pale? Still the blaring falls

  Crashing between my garden walls

  Gustily about my ears

  And my eyes, uncooled by tears,

  Are drawn as my stone heart is drawn,

  Until the east bleeds in the dawn

  And the clean face of the day

  Drives them slinkingly away.

  DAYS and nights into years weave

  A net to blind and to deceive

  Me, yet my full heart yearns

  As the world about me turns

  For things I know, yet cannot know,

  ’Twixt sky above and earth below.

  All day I watch the sunlight spill

  Inward, driving out the chill

  That night has laid here fold on fold

  Between these walls, till they would hold

  No more. With half closed eyes I see

  Peace and quiet liquidly

  Steeping the walls and cloaking them

  With warmth and silence soaking them;

  They do not know, nor care to know,

  Why evening waters sigh in flow;

  Why about the pole star turn

  Stars that flare and freeze and burn;

  Nor why the seasons, springward wheeling,

  Set the bells of living pealing.

  They sorrow not that they are dumb:

  For they would not a god become.

  … I am sun-steeped, until I

  Am all sun, and liquidly

  I leave my pedestal and flow

  Quietly along each row,

  Breathing in their fragrant breath

  And that of the earth beneath.

  Time may now unheeded pass:

  I am the life that warms the grass—

  Or does the earth warm me? I know

  Not, nor do I care to know.

  I am with the flowers one,

  Now that is my bondage done;

  And in the earth I shall sleep

  To never wake, to never weep

  For things I know, yet cannot know,

  ’Twixt sky above and earth below,

  For Pan’s understanding eyes

  Quietly bless me from the skies,

  Giving me, who knew his sorrow,

  The gift of sleep to be my morrow.

  EPILOGUE

  May walks in this garden, fair

  As a girl veiled in her hair

  And decked in tender green and gold;

  And yet my marble heart is cold

  Within these walls where people pass

  Across the close-clipped emerald grass

  To stare at me with stupid eyes

  Or stand in noisy ecstasies

  Before my marble, while the breeze

  That whispers in the shivering trees

  Sings of quiet hill and plain,

  Of vales where softly broods the rain,

  Of orchards whose pink flaunted trees,

  Gold flecked by myriad humming bees,

  Enclose a roof-thatch faded gray,

  Like a giant hive. Away

  To brilliant pines upon the sea

  Where waves linger silkenly

  Upon the shelving sand, and sedge

  Rustling gray along the edge

  Of dunes that rise against the sky

  Where painted sea-gulls wheel and fly.

  Ah, how all this calls to me

  Who marble-bound must ever be

  While turn unchangingly the years.

  My heart is full, yet sheds no tears

  To cool my burning carven eyes

  Bent to the unchanging skies:

  I would be sad with changing year,

  Instead, a sad, bound prisoner,

  For though about me seasons go

  My heart knows only winter snow.

  April, May, June, 1919

  A GREEN BOUGH

  COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE

  HADDON CRAFTSMEN AND BOUND BY THE

  J. F. TAPLEY COMPANY

  I

  WE SIT drinking tea

  Beneath the lilacs on a summer afternoon

  Comfortably, at our ease

  With fresh linen on our knees,

  And we sit, we three

  In diffident contentedness

  Lest we let each other guess

  How happy we are

  Together here, watching the young moon

  Lying shyly on her back, and the first star.

  There are women here:

  Smooth-shouldered creatures in sheer scarves, that pass

  And eye us strangely as they pass.

  One of them, our hostess, pauses near:

  —Are you quite all right, sir? she stops to ask.

  —You are a bit lonely, I fear.

  Will you have more tea? cigarettes? No?—

  I thank her, waiting for her to go:

  To us they are like figures on a masque.

  —Who?—shot down

  Last spring—Poor chap, his mind

  .… doctors say … hoping rest will bring—

  Busy with their tea and cigarettes and books

  Their voices come to us like tangled rooks.

  We sit in silent amity.

  —It was a morning in late May:

&
nbsp; A white woman, a white wanton near a brake,

  A rising whiteness mirrored in a lake;

  And I, old chap, was out before the day

  In my little pointed-eared machine,

  Stalking her through the shimmering reaches of the sky.

  I knew that I could catch her when I liked

  For no nymph ever ran as swiftly as she could.

  We mounted, up and up

  And found her at the border of a wood:

  A cloud forest, and pausing at its brink

  I felt her arms and her cool breath.

  The bullet struck me here, I think

  In the left breast

  And killed my little pointed-eared machine. I saw it fall

  The last wine in the cup.…

  I thought that I could find her when I liked,

  But now I wonder if I found her, after all.

  One should not die like this

  On such a day,

  From angry bullet or other modern way.

  Ah, science is a dangerous mouth to kiss.

  One should fall, I think, to some Etruscan dart

  In meadows where the Oceanides

  Flower the wanton grass with dancing,

  And, on such a day as this

  Become a tall wreathed column: I should like to be

  An ilex on an isle in purple seas.

  Instead, I had a bullet through my heart—

  —Yes, you are right:

  One should not die like this,

  And for no cause nor reason in the world.

  ’Tis well enough for one like you to talk

  Of going in the far thin sky to stalk

  The mouth of death: you did not know the bliss

  Of home and children; the serene

  Of living and of work and joy that was our heritage.

  And, best of all, of age.

  We were too young.

  Still—he draws his hand across his eyes

  —Still, it could not be otherwise.

  We had been

  Raiding over Mannheim. You’ve seen

  The place? Then you know

  How one hangs just beneath the stars and sees

  The quiet darkness burst and shatter against them

  And, rent by spears of light, rise in shuddering waves

  Crested with restless futile flickerings.

  The black earth drew us down, that night

  Out of the bullet-tortured air:

  A great black bowl of fireflies.…

  There is an end to this, somewhere:

  One should not die like this—

  One should not die like this.

  His voice has dropped and the wind is mouthing his words

  While the lilacs nod their heads on slender stalks,

  Agreeing while he talks,

  Caring not if he is heard or is not heard.

  One should not die like this.

  Half audible, half silent words

  That hover like gray birds

  About our heads.

  We sit in silent amity.

  I am cold, for now the sun is gone

  And the air is cooler where we three

  Are sitting. The light has followed the sun

  And I no longer see

  The pale lilacs stirring against the lilac-pale sky.

  They bend their heads toward me as one head.

  —Old man—they say—How did you die?

  I—I am not dead.

  I hear their voices as from a great distance—Not dead

  He’s not dead, poor chap; he didn’t die—

  II

  LAXLY reclining, he watches the firelight going

  Across the ceiling, down the farther wall

  In cumulate waves, a golden river flowing

  Above them both, down yawning dark to fall

  Like music dying down a monstrous brain.

  Laxly reclining, he sees her sitting there

  With firelight like a hand laid on her hair,

  With firelight like a hand upon the keys

  Playing a music of lustrous silent gold.

  Bathed in gold she sits, upon her knees

  Her silent hands, palm upward, lie at ease,

  Filling with gold at each flame’s spurting rise,

  Spilling gold as each flame sinks and sighs,

  Watching her plastic shadow on the wall

  In unison with the firelight lift and fall

  To the music by the firelight played

  Upon the keys from which her hands had strayed

  And fallen.

  A pewter bowl of lilies in the room

  Seems to him to weigh and change the gloom

  Into a palpable substance he can feel

  Heavily on his hands, slowing the wheel

  The firelight steadily turns upon the ceiling.

  The firelight steadily hums, steadily wheeling

  Until his brain, stretched and tautened, suddenly cracks.

  Play something else.

  And laxly sees his brain

  Whirl to infinite fragments, like brittle sparks,

  Vortex together again, and whirl again.

  Play something else.

  He tries to keep his tone

  Lightly natural, watching the shadows thrown,

  Watching the timid shadows near her throat

  Link like hands about her from the dark.

  His eyes like hurried fingers fumble and fly

  About the narrow bands with which her dress is caught

  And lightly trace the line of back and thigh.

  He sees his brain disintegrate, spark by spark.

  Play something else, he says.

  And on the dark

  His brain floats like a moon behind his eyes,

  Swelling, retreating enormously. He shuts them

  As one concealed suppresses two loud cries

  And on the troubled lids a vision sees:

  It is as though he watched her mount a stair

  And rose with her on the suppleness of her knees,

  Saw her skirts in swirling line on line,

  Saw the changing shadows ripple and rise

  After the flexing muscles; subtle thighs,

  Rhythm of back and throat and gathered train.

  A bursting moon, wheels spin in his brain.

  As through a corridor rushing with harsh rain

  He walks his life, and reaching the end

  He turns it as one turns a wall

  She plays, and softly playing, sees the room

  Dissolve, and like a dream the still walls fade

  And sink, while music softly played

  Softly flows through lily-scented gloom.

  She is a flower lightly cast

  Upon a river flowing, dimly going

  Between two silent shores where willows lean,

  Watching the moon stare through the willow screen.

  The hills are dark and cool, clearly remote,

  Within whose shadow she has paused to rest.

  Could she but stay here forever, where grave rain slants above them,

  Rain as slow as starlight on her breast;

  Could she but drift forever along these ways

  Clearly shadowed, barred with veils of rain,

  Beneath azure fields with stars in choired processional

  To chant the silence from her heart again.

  Laxly reclining, he feels the firelight beating

  A clamor of endless waves upon the dark,

  A swiftly thunderous surf swiftly retreating.

  His brain falls hissing from him, a spark, a spark,

  And his eyes like hurried fingers fumble and fly

  Among the timid shadows near her throat,

  About the narrow bands with which her dress is caught,

  And lightly trace the line of back and thigh.

  He sees his brain disintegrate, spark by spark,

  And she turns as if she heard two cries.

  He st
ands and watches her mount the stair

  Step by step, with her subtle suppleness,

  That nervous strength that was ever his surprise;

  The lifted throat, the thin crisp swirl of dress

  Like a ripple of naked muscles before his eyes.

  A bursting moon: wheels spin in his brain,

  And whirl in a vortex of sparks together again.

  At the turn she stops, and trembles there,

  Nor watches him as he steadily mounts the stair.

  III

  THE cave was ribbed with dark. Then seven lights

  Like golden bats windy along the eaves

  Awoke and slipped inverted anchorage

  In seven echoes of an unheard sound.

  The cave is ribbed with music. Rumored far

  The gate behind the moonwashed sentinel

  Clangs to his lifted mace. Then all the bats

  Of light slant whirring down the inclined air.

  The cave no more a cave is: ribs of music

  Arch and crack the walls, the uncaged bats

  From earth’s core break its spun and floating crust.

  Hissing seas rage overhead, and he

  Staring up through icy twilight, sees

  The stars within the water melt and sweep

  In silver spears of streaming burning hair.

  The seas roar past, shuddering rocks in seas

  Mutter away like hoarse and vanquished horns.

  Now comes dark again, he thinks, but finds

  A wave of gold breaking a jewelled crest

  And he is walled with gold. About him snored

  Kings and mitred bishops tired of sin

  Who dreamed themselves of heaven wearied,

  And now may sleep, hear rain, and snore again.

  One among them walks, whose citadel

  Though stormed by sleep, is still unconquered.

  In crimson she is robed, her golden hair,

  Her mouth still yet unkissed, once housed her in

  The sharp and quenchless sorrows of the world.

  Kings in hell, robed in icy flame

  Panted to crown them with her dreamless snows;

  Glutted bishops, past the sentinel,

  Couched in heaven, mewed for paradise.

  Amid the dead walks she who, musicfleshed,

  Whose mouth, two notes laid one on other for