Marble Faun & Green Bough by William Faulkner Page B

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.
    A LL 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.
    T HE 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.
    O N 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