Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  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 him 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.”

  “Yes, it is I who, in the world’s clear evening

  with a silver star like a rose in a bowl of lacquer,

  when you have played your play and at last are quiet,

  will wait for you with sleep, and you can drown.”

  XVII

  o atthis

  for a moment an aeon i pause plunging

  above the narrow precipice of thy breast

  what before thy white precipice the eagle

  sharp in the sunlight and cleaving

  his long blue ecstasy and what

  wind on hilltops blond with the wings of the morning

  what wind o atthis sweeping the april to lesbos

  whitening the seas

  XVIII

  ONCE upon an adolescent hill

  There lay a lad who watched amid the piled

  And silver shapes of aircarved cumulae

  A lone uncleaving eagle, and the still

  Serenely blue dissolving of desire.

  Easeful valleys of the earth had been: he looked not back,

  Not down, he had not seen

  Lush lanes of vernal peace, and green

  Unebbing windless tides of trees; no wheeling gold

  Upon the lamplit wall where is no speed

  Save that which peaceful tongue ‘twixt bed and supper wrought.

  Here still the blue, the headlands; here still he

  Who did not waken and was not awaked.

  The eagle sped its lonely course and tall;

  Was gone. Yet still upon his lonely hill the lad

  Winged on past changing headlands where was laked

  The constant blue

  And saw the fleeing canyons of the sky

  Tilt to banshee wire and slanted aileron,

  And his own lonely shape on scudding walls

  Where harp the ceaseless thunders of the sun.

  XIX

  GREEN is the water, green

  The grave voluptuous music of the sun;

  The pale and boneless fingers of a queen

  Upon his body stoop and run.

  Within these slow cathedralled corridors

  Where ribs of sunlight drown

  He joins in green caressing wars

  With seamaids red and brown

  And chooses one to bed upon

  And lapped and lulled is he

  By dimdissolving music of the sun

  Requiemed down through the sea.

  XX

  HERE he stands, while eternal evening falls

  And it is like a dream between gray walls

  Slowly falling, slowly falling

  Between two walls of gray and topless stone,

  Between two walls with silence on them grown.

  The twilight is severed with waters always falling

  And heavy with budded flowers that never die,

  And a voice that is forever calling

  Sweetly and soberly.

  Spring wakes the walls of a cold street,

  Sows silver remembered seed in frozen places:

  Upon meadows like still and simply smiling faces,

  and wrinkled streams, and grass that knew her feet.

  Here he stands, without the gate of stone

  Between two walls with silence on them grown,

  And littered leaves of silence on the floor;

  Here, in a solemn silver of ruined springs

  Among the smooth green buds, before the door

  He stands and sings.

  XXI

  WHAT sorrow, knights and gentles? scroll and

  Harp will prop the shaken sky

  With the bronzehard fame of Roland

  Who was not bronze, and so did die.

  And ladies fair, why tears? why sighs?

  There’s still many a champion that’ll

  Feel the sharp goads of your eyes

  As Roland did, in love and battle.

  And be of cheer, ye valiant foemen.

  Woman bore you: though amain

  Life’s gale may blow, there’s born of woman

  One who’ll give you sleep again.

  Weep not for Roland: envy him

  Whose fame is fast in song and story,

  While he, with myriad cherubim

  Is lapped in ease, asleep in glory.

  XXII

  I SEE your face through the twilight of my mind,

  A dusk of forgotten things, remembered things;

  It is a corridor dark and cool with music

  And too dim for sight,

  That leads me to a door which brings

  You, clothed in quiet sound for my delight.

  XXIII

  SOMEWHERE a moon will bloom and find me not,

  Then wane the windless gardens of the blue;

  Somewhere a lost green hurt (but better this

  Than in rich desolation long forgot)

  Somewhere a sweet remembered mouth to kiss —

  Still, you fool; lie still: that’s not for you.

  XXIV

  HOW canst thou be chaste, when lonely nights

  And nights I lay beside in intimate loveliness

  Thy grave beauty, girdle-slacked; and grief

  So long my own was gone, and there was peace

  Like azure wings my body along to lie

  Wherein thy name like muted silver bells

  Breathed over me, and found

  Less joy, but less of grief than waking thou didst stir?

  Then I did need but turn to thee, and then

  My hand dreamed on thy little breast. Then flowed

  Beneath my hand thy body’s curve, and turned

  To me within the famished lonely dark

  Thy sleeping kiss.

  XXV

  WAS this the dream?

  Thus: It seemed I lay

  Upon a beach where sand and water kiss

  With endless kissing in a dying fall. The moon

  Walked in the water, trod with silver shoon

  The quavering sands: naught else but this.

  And then and soon, O soon

  What wind

  Shaped thee in Cnydos? shaped

  Thy graven music? whence such guise

  Doth starlight take nor beauty never taken

  Yet hand so hungry for?

  O I have seen

  The ultimate hawk unprop the ultimate skies,

  And with the curving image of his fall

  Locked beak to beak. And waked

  And waked. And then the moon

  And quavering sands where kissing crept and slaked

  And that was all.

  (Or had I slept

  And in the huddle of its fading, wept

  That long waking ere I should sleep again?)

  XXVI

  STILL, and look down, look down:

  Thy curious withdrawn hand

  Unprobes, now spirit and sense unblend, undrown,

  Knit by a word and sundered by a tense

  Like this: Is: Was: and Not. Nor caught
between

  Spent beaches and the annealed insatiate sea

  Dost myriad lie, cold and intact Selene,

  On secret strand or old disastrous lee

  Behind the fading mistral of the sense.

  XXVII

  THE Raven bleak and Philomel

  Amid the bleeding trees were fixed.

  His hoarse cry and hers were mixed

  And through the dark their droppings fell

  Upon the red erupted rose,

  Upon the broken branch of peach

  Blurred with scented mouths, that each

  To another sing, and close.

  ‘Mid all the passionate choristers

  Of time and tide and love and death,

  Philomel with jewelled breath

  Dreams of flight, but never stirs.

  On rose and peach their droppings bled;

  Love a sacrifice has lain,

  Beneath his hand his mouth is slain,

  Beneath his hand his mouth is dead.

  Then the Raven, bleak and blent

  With all the slow despair of time,

  Lets Philomel about him chime

  Until her quiring voice is spent.

  Philomel, on pain’s red root

  Bloomed and sang, and pain was not;

  When she has sung and is forgot,

  The Raven speaks, no longer mute.

  The Raven bleak and Philomel

  Amid the bleeding trees were fixed.

  His hoarse cry and hers were mixed,

  On rose and peach their droppings fell.

  XXVIII

  OVER the world’s rim, drawing bland November

  Reluctant behind them, drawing the moons of cold:

  What do their lonely voices wake to remember

  In this dust ere ’twas flesh? what restless old

  Dream a thousand years was safely sleeping

  Wakes my blood to sharp unease? what horn

  Rings out to them? Was I free once, sweeping

  Their wild and lonely skies ere I was born?

  The hand that shaped my body, that gave me vision,