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 stands 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 de
eps
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
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
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
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:
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
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 699
