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
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
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
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