The Marble Faun, William Faulkner
Contents
Prologue
The Marble Faun
Epilogue
To My Mother
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.
THE MARBLE FAUN
IF I were free, then I would go
Where the first chill spring winds blow,
Wrapping a light shocked mountain’s brow
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.”
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
