Marble Faun & Green Bough Read Online Free PDF Page B

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
    T HE 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
    B e YOND 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
    W HEN 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
    Y OUNG 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
    W HEN 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
    H IS mother said: I’ll make him
A lad has never been
(And rocked him closely,