The Marble Faun and a Green Bough

  A honeyed parting on the hived store;

  Whose throat a sweetened reed had blown to be;

  Whose breast was harped of silver and of two

  Grave small singing birds uncaged; the chant

  Of limbs to one another tuned and wed

  That, as she walked, the air with music filled;

  Now she, for whose caress once duke and king

  And scarlet cardinal broke cords of fate,

  From couch to couch her restless slumber seeks

  And strokes indifferent lead with moaning hands.

  The citied dead snore past, the hissing seas

  Roar overhead again, and bows of coral

  Whip gleaming fish in darts of unmouthed colors:

  Trees of coral strip their colored leaves

  Of fish, and each leaf has two bats of light

  Where eyes would be, while other golden bats

  Slipping among them, gleam their curving sides.

  Thundering rocks crash down; spears of starlight

  Shatter and break among them. Water-stallions

  Neighing, crest the foaming rush of tides.

  Drowning waves, airward rushing, crash

  Columned upward, rake the stars and hear

  A humming chord within the heavens bowled,

  Then plunging back, they lose between the rocks

  A dying rumor of the chanting stars.

  The cave is ribbed with music; threads of sound

  Gleam on the whirring wings of bats of gold,

  Loop from the grassroots to the roots of trees

  Thrust into sunlight, where the song of birds

  Spins silver threads to gleam from bough to bough.

  Grass in meadows cools his fancy’s feet:

  Dew is on the grass, and birds in hedges

  Weave the sunlight with sharp streaks of flight.

  Bees break apple bloom, and peach and clover

  Sing in the southern air where aimless clouds

  Go up the sky-hill, cropping it like sheep,

  And startled pigeons, like a wind beginning,

  Fill the air with sucking silver sound.

  He would leave the cave, before the bats

  Of light grow weary, to their eaves return,

  While music fills the dark as wind fills sails

  And Silence like a priest on thin gray feet

  Tells his beads of minutes on beside.

  The cave is ribbed with dark, the music flies,

  The bats of light are eaved and dark again.

  Before him as, the priest of Silence by

  And all the whispering nuns of breathing blent

  With Silence’s self, he walks, the door beside

  Stands the moonwashed sentinel to break

  Its lichened sleep. Here halts the retinue.

  The priest between his fingers lets his beads

  Purr down. The nuns the timeless interval

  Fill with all the still despair of breath.

  He gateward turns. The sentinel his mace

  Lifts in calm indifference. At the stroke

  The sleeping gate wakes yawning back upon

  Where gaunt Orion, swinging by his knees,

  Crashes the arcing moon among the stars.

  IV

  and let

  within the antiseptic atmosphere

  of russel square grown brisk and purified

  the ymca (the american express for this sole purpose too)

  let lean march teasing the breasts of spring

  horned like reluctant snails within

  pink intervals

  a brother there

  so many do somanydo

  from out the weary courtesy of time

  fate a lady shopper takes her change

  brightly in coppers somanydo

  with soaped efficiency english food agrees

  even with thos cook

  here is a

  tunnel a long one like a black period

  with kissing punctuate on our left we see

  forty poplars like the breasts of girls

  taut with running

  on our left we see

  that blanched plateau wombing cunningly

  hushing his brilliant counterattack saying

  shhhhhh to general blah in the year mille

  neufcentvingtsomethingorother

  may five years defunct

  in a patient wave of sleep till natures

  stomach settles hearing their sucking boots

  their brittle sweat harshly evaporating carrying

  dung there was no time to drop

  the general himself

  is now on tour somewhere in the states

  telling about the war

  and here

  battalioned crosses in a pale parade

  the german burned his dead (which goes to show

  god visited him with proper wrath)

  o spring

  above unsapped convolvulae of hills april

  a bee sipping perplexed with pleasure o spring

  o wanton o cruel

  o bitter and new as fire

  baring to the curved and hungry hand

  of march your white unsubtle thighs

  grass his feet no longer trouble grows

  lush in lanes he

  sleeps quietly decay

  makes death a cuckold yes lady

  8 rue diena we take care of that yes

  in amiens youll find 3 good hotels

  V

  THERE is no shortening-breasted nymph to shake

  The tickets that stem up the lidless blaze

  Of sunlight stiffening the shadowed ways,

  Nor does the haunted silence even wake

  Nor ever stir.

  No footfall trembles in the smoky brush

  Where bright leaves flicker down the dappled shade:

  A tapestry that cloaks this empty glade

  And shudders up to still the pulsing thrush

  And frighten her

  With the contact of its unboned hands

  Until she falls and melts into the night

  Where inky shadows splash upon the light

  Crowding the folded darkness as it stands

  About each grave

  Whose headstone glimmers dimly in the gloom

  Threaded by the doves’ unquiet calls,

  Like memories that swim between the walls

  And dim the peopled stillness of a room

  Into a nave

  Where no light breaks the thin cool panes of glass

  To falling butterflies upon the floor;

  While the shadows crowd within the door

  And whisper in the dead leaves as they pass

  Along the ground.

  Here the sunset paints its wheeling gold

  Where there is no breast to still in strife

  Of joy or sadness, nor does any life

  Flame these hills and vales grown sharp and cold

  And bare of sound.

  VI

  MAN comes, man goes, and leaves behind

  The bleaching bones that bore his lust;

  The palfrey of his loves and hates

  Is stabled at the last in dust.

  He cozened it and it did bear

  Him to wishing’s utmost rim;

  But now, when wishing’s gained, he finds

  It was the steed that cozened him.

  VII

  TRUMPETS of sun to silence fall

  On house and barn and stack and wall.

  Within the cottage, slowly wheeling,

  The lamplight’s gold turns on the ceiling.

  Beneath the stark and windless vane

  Cattle stamp and munch their grain;

  Below the starry apple bough

  Leans the warped and clotted plow.

  The moon rolls up, while far away

  And thin with sorrow, the sheepdog’s bay

  Fills the valley with lonely sound.

  Slow leaves of dar
kness steal around.

  The watch the watchman, Death, will keep

  And man in amnesty may sleep.

  The world is still, for she is old

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

  Her gossip there, the watching moon

  Views hill and stream and wave and dune

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

  They pass and pass, she cares not whither;—

  Lovers’ vows by her made bright,

  The outcast cursing at her light;

  Mazed within her lambence lies

  All the strife of flesh that dies.

  Then through the darkened room with whispers speaking

  There comes to man the sleep that all are seeking.

  The lurking thief, in sharp regret

  Watches the far world, waking yet,

  But which in sleep will soon be still;

  While he upon his misty hill

  Hears a dark bird briefly cry

  From its thicket on the sky,

  And curses the moon because her light

  Marks every outcast under night.

  Still swings the murderer, bent of knees

  In a slightly strained repose,

  Nor feels the faint hand of the breeze:

  He now with Solomon all things knows:

  That, lastly, breath is to a man

  But to want and fret a span.

  VIII

  HE FURROWS the brown earth, doubly sweet

  To a hushed great passage of wind

  Dragging its shadow. Beneath his feet

  The furrow breaks, and at its end

  He turns. With peace about his head

  Traverses he again the earth: his own,

  Still with enormous promises of bread

  And the clean smell of its strength upon him blown.

  Against the shimmering azure of the wood

  A blackbird whistles, cool and mellow;

  And there, where for a space he stood

  To fill his lungs, a spurting yellow

  Rabbit bursts, its flashing scut

  Muscled in erratic lines

  Of fright from furrow hill to rut.

  He shouts: the darkly liquid pines

  Mirror his falling voice, as leaf

  Raises clear brown depths to meet its falling self;

  Then again the blackbird, thief

  Of silence in a burnished pelf.

  Inscribes the answer to all life

  Upon the white page of the sky:

  The furious emptiness of strife

  For him to read who passes by.

  Beneath the marbled sky go sheep

  Slow as clouds on hills of green;

  Somewhere waking waters sleep

  Beyond a faintleaved willow screen.

  Wind and sun and air: he can

  Furrow the brown earth, doubly sweet

  With his own sweat, since here a man

  May bread him with his hands and feet.

  IX

  THE sun lies long upon the hills,

  The plowman slowly homeward wends;

  Cattle low, uneased of milk,

  The lush grass to their passing bends.

  Mockingbirds in the ancient oak

  In golden madness swing and shake;

  Sheep like surf against a cliff

  Of green hills, slowly flow and break.

  Then sun sank down, and with him went

  A pageantry whose swords are sheathed

  At last, as warriors long ago

  Let fall their storied arms and breathed

  This air and found this peace as he

  Who across this sunset moves to rest,

  Finds but simple scents and sounds;

  And this is all, and this is best.

  X

  BeYOND the hill the sun swam downward

  And he was lapped in azure seas;

  The dream that hurt him, the blood that whipped him

  Dustward, slowed and gave him ease.

  Behind him day lay stark with labor

  Of him who strives with earth for bread;

  Before him sleep, tomorrow his circling

  Sinister shadow about his head.

  But now, with night, this was forgotten:

  Phantoms of breath round man swim fast;

  Forgotten his father, Death; Derision

  His mother, forgotten by her at last.

  Nymph and faun in this dusk might riot

  Beyond all oceaned Time’s cold greenish bar

  To shrilling pipes, to cymbals’ hissing

  Beneath a single icy star

  Where he, to his own compulsion

  —A terrific figure on an urn—

  Is caught between his two horizons,

  Forgetting that he cant return.

  XI

  WHEN evening shadows grew around

  And a thin moon filled the lane,

  Their slowing breath made scarce a sound

  Where Richard lay with Jane.

  The world was empty of all save they

  And Spring itself was snared,

  And well’s the fare of any day

  When none has lesser fared:

  Young breasts hollowed out with fire,

  A singing fire that spun

  The gusty tree of his desire

  Till tree and gale were one;

  And a small white belly yielded up

  That they might try to make

  Of youth and dark and spring a cup

  That cannot fail nor slake.

  XII

  YOUNG Richard, striding toward town,

  Felt life within him grown

  Taut as a silver wire on which

  Desire’s sharp winds were blown

  To a monstrous sound that lapped him close

  With a rain of earth and fire,

  Flaying him exquisitely

  With whips of living wire.

  Under the arch where Mary dwelt

  And nights were brief and sharp,

  Her ancient music fell with his

  As cythern falls with harp

  And Richard’s fire within her fire

  Swirled up into the air,

  And polarised was all breath when

  A girl let down her hair.

  XIII

  WHEN I was young and proud and gay

  And flowers in fields were thicking,

  There was Tad and Ralph and Ray

  All waiting for my picking.

  And who, with such a page to spell

  And the hand of Spring to spread it,

  Could like the tale told just as well

  By another who had read it?

  Ah, not I! and if I had

  —When I was young and pretty—

  Not learned to spell, then there was Tad

  And Ralph and Ray to pity.

  There was Tad and Ray and Ralph,

  And field and lane were sunny;

  And ah! I spelled my page myself

  Long ere I married Johnny.

  XIV

  HIS mother said: I’ll make him

  A lad has never been

  (And rocked him closely, stroking

  His soft hair’s yellow sheen)

  His bright youth will be metal

  No alchemist has seen.

  His mother said: I’ll give him

  A brave and high desire,

  ’Till all the dross of living

  Burns clean within his fire.

  He’ll be strong and merry

  And he’ll be clean and brave,

  And all the world will rue it

  When he is dark in grave.

  But dark will treat him kinder

  Than man would anywhere

  (With barren winds to rock him

  —Though now he doesn’t care—

  And hushed and haughty starlight

  To stroke his golden hair)

  Mankind called him felon

  And hanged hi
m stark and high

  Where four winds could watch him

  Troubled on the sky.

  Once he was quick and golden,

  Once he was clean and brave.

  Earth, you dreamed and shaped him:

  Will you deny him grave?

  Being dead he will forgive you

  And all that you have done,

  But he’ll curse you if you leave him

  Grinning at the sun.

  XV

  BONNY earth and bonny sky

  And bonny was the sweep

  Of sun and rain in apple trees

  While I was yet asleep.

  And bonny earth and bonny sky

  And bonny’ll be the rain

  And sun among the apple trees

  When I’ve long slept again.

  XVI

  BEHOLD me, in my feathered cap and doublet,

  strutting across this stage that men call living:

  the mirror of all youth and hope and striving.

  Even you, in me, become a grimace.”

  “Ay, in that belief you too are but a mortal,

  thinking that peace and quietude and silence

  are but the shadows of your little gestures

  upon the wall of breathing that surrounds you.”

  “Ho, old spectre, solemnly ribbed with wisdom!

  D’ye think that I must feel your dark compulsions

  and flee with kings and queens in whistling darkness?

  I am star, and sun, and moon, and laughter.”

  “What star is there that falls, with none to watch it?

  What sun is there more permanent than darkness?

  What moon is there that cracks not? ay, what laughter,

  what purse is there that empties not with spending?”

  “Ho.… One grows weary, posturing and grinning,

  aping a dream to a house of peopled shadows!

  Ah, ’twas you who stripped me bare and set me

  gibbering at mine own face in a mirror.”