L'Après-Midi d'un Faune

 

I follow through the singing trees

Her streaming clouded hair and face

And lascivious dreaming knees

Like gleaming water from some place

Of sleeping streams, or autumn leaves

Slow shed through still, love-wearied air.

She pauses: and as one who grieves

Shakes down her blown and vagrant hair

To veil her face, but not her eyes -

A hot quick spark, each sudden glance,

Or like the wild brown bee that flies

Sweet winged, a sharp extravagance

Of kisses on my limbs and neck.

She whirls and dances through the trees

That lift and sway like arms and fleck

Her with quick shadows, and the breeze

Lies on her short and circled breast.

Now hand in hand with her I go,

The green night in the silver west

Of virgin stars, pale row on row

Like ghostly hands, and ere she sleep

The dusk will take her by some stream

In silent meadows, dim and deep -

In dreams of stars and dreaming dream.

I have a nameless wish to go

To some far silent midnightnoon

Where lonely streams whisper and flow

And sigh on sands blanched by the moon,

And blond limbed dancers whirling past,

The senile worn moon staring through

The sighing trees, until at last,

Their hair is powdered bright with dew.

And their sad slow limbs and brows

Are petals drifting on the breeze

Shed from the fingers of the boughs;

Then suddenly on all of these,

A sound like some great deep bell stroke

Falls, and they dance, unclad and cold -

It was the earth' s great heart that broke

For springs before the world grew old.

 

William Faulkner