The Marble Faun and a Green Bough

by William Faulkner

  LADY, unawares still bride of sleep,

  To thine own self sweet prisoner and fell

  Thrall to the vassalled garrison that keep

  Thy soft unguarded breast’s white citadel;

  Alas, oft-cozened maid, who’d not be twain

  Yet self-confounded, while importunates

  The foe repulsed, and single, dost remain

  The frequent darling of the gods and fates.

  Thou chaste? Why, I’ve lain lonely nights that fled

  No swifter than thou came and brided me

  Who held thee as the fabric of thy bed

  Where, turning on thy pillow’s cheek, thy kiss

  Took in thy citadel an enemy

  Against whose mouth thy mouth sleeps on—like this.

  XLI

  HER unripe shallow breast is green among

  The windy bloom of drunken apple trees,

  And seven fauns importunate as bees

  To sip the thin young honey of her tongue.

  The old satyr, leafed and hidden, dreams her kiss

  His beard amid, leaving his mouth in sight;

  Dreams her body in a moony night

  Shortening and shuddering into his;

  Then sees a faun, bolder than the rest,

  Slide his hand upon her sudden breast,

  And feels the life in him go cold, and pass

  Until the fire that kiss had brought to be

  Gutters and faints away; ’tis night, and he

  Laughing wrings the bitter wanton grass.

  XLII

  BENEATH the apple tree Eve’s tortured shape

  Glittered in the Snake’s, her riven breast

  Sloped his coils and took the sun’s escape

  To augur black her sin from east to west.

  In winter’s night man may keep him warm

  Regretting olden sins he did omit;

  With fetiches the whip of blood to charm,

  Forgetting that with breath he’s heir to it.

  But old gods fall away, the ancient Snake

  Is throned and crowned instead, and has for minion

  That golden apple which will never slake

  But ever feeds man’s crumb of fire, when plover

  And swallow and shrill northing birds whip over

  Nazarene and Roman and Virginian.

  XLIII

  lets see I’ll say—between two brief balloons

  of skirts I saw grave chalices of knees

  and momently the cloyed and cloudy bees

  where hive her honeyed thighs those little moons

  these slender moons’ unsunder I would break

  so soft I’d break that hushed virginity

  of sleep that in her narrow house would she

  find me drowsing when she came awake—

  no—madam I love your daughter—I will say

  from out some leafed dilemma of desire

  the wind hales yawning spring still half undressed

  the hand that once did short to sighs her breast

  now slaps her white behind to rosy fire

  —sir your health your money how are they—

  XLIV

  IF THERE be grief, then let it be but rain,

  And this but silver grief for grieving’s sake,

  If these green woods be dreaming here to wake

  Within my heart, if I should rouse again.

  But I shall sleep, for where is any death

  While in these blue hills slumbrous overhead

  I’m rooted like a tree? Though I be dead,

  This earth that holds me fast will find me breath.

  Books by

  WILLIAM FAULKNER

  Soldiers’ Pay

  Mosquitoes

  Sartoris

  The Sound and the Fury

  As I Lay Dying

  Sanctuary

  These Thirteen

  Light in August

  Doctor Martino

  Pylon

  Absalom, Absalom!

  The Unvanquished

  The Wild Palms

  The Hamlet

  Go Down, Moses

  Intruder in the Dust

  Knight’s Gambit

  Collected Stories

  Requiem for a Nun

  A Fable

  Big Woods

  The Town

  The Mansion

  The Reivers

  POETRY

  The Marble Faun

  A Green Bough