Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  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