The Marble Faun

He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen.'Twas a poor statue underneath a massOf leafless branches, with a blackened backAnd a green foot--an isolated FaunIn old deserted park, who, bending forward,Half-merged himself in the entangled boughs,Half in his marble settings. He was there,Pensive, and bound to earth; and, as all thingsDevoid of movement, he was there--forgotten.

Trees were around him, whipped by icy blasts--Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird,And, like himself, grown old in that same place.Through the dark network of their undergrowth,Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.Starless and moonless, a rough winter's nightWas letting down her lappets o'er the mist.This--nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.

Poor, helpless marble, how I've pitied it!Less often man--the harder of the two.

So, then, without a word that might offendHis ear deformed--for well the marble hearsThe voice of thought--I said to him: "You hailFrom the gay amorous age. O Faun, what saw youWhen you were happy? Were you of the Court?

"Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speakTo tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass.Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days,Have you not sometimes with that oblique eyeWinked at the Farnese Hercules?--Alone,Have you, O Faun, considerately turnedFrom side to side when counsel-seekers came,And now advised as shepherd, now as satyr?--Have you sometimes, upon this very bench,Seen, at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instillingGrace into Gondi?--Have you ever thrownThat searching glance on Louis with Fontange,On Anne with Buckingham; and did they notStart, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forthFrom corner of the wood?--Was your adviceAs to the thyrsis or the ivy asked,When, in grand ballet of fantastic form,God Phoebus, or God Pan, and all his court,Turned the fair head of the proud Montespan,Calling her Amaryllis?--La Fontaine,Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he,Tears on his eyelids, to reveal to youThe sorrows of his nymphs of Vaux?--What saidBoileau to you--to you--O lettered Faun,Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, heldThat charming dialogue?--Say, have you seenYoung beauties sporting on the sward?--Have youBeen honored with a sight of MolièreIn dreamy mood?--Has he perchance, at eve,When here the thinker homeward went, has he,Who--seeing souls all naked--could not fearYour nudity, in his inquiring mind,Confronted you with Man?"

Under the thickly-tangled branches, thusDid I speak to him; he no answer gave.

I shook my head, and moved myself away;Then, from the copses, and from secret cavesHid in the wood, methought a ghostly voiceCame forth and woke an echo in my soulsAs in the hollow of an amphora.

"Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say,"What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken FaunsIn peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know,Poet, that ever it is impious deemed,In desert spots where drowsy shades repose--Though love itself might prompt thee--to shake downThe moss that hangs from ruined centuries,And, with the vain noise of throe ill-timed words,To mar the recollections of the dead?"

Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mistI hurried, dreaming of the vanished days,And still behind me--hieroglyph obscureOf antique alphabet--the lonely FaunHeld to his laughter, through the falling night.

I went my way; but yet--in saddened spiritPondering on all that had my vision crossed,Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time--Through all, at distance, would my fancy see,In the woods, statues; shadows in the past!