L'Après-Midi D'Un Faune

I would immortalize these nymphs: so brightTheir sunlit colouring, so airy light,It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream?My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seemA subtle tracery of branches grownThe tree's true self--proving that I have knownNo triumph, but the shadow of a rose.But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... supposeThey bodied forth your senses' fabulous thirst?Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first,As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring,Beget: the other, sighing, passioning,Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon?No, through this quiet, when a weary swoonCrushes and chokes the latest faint essayOf morning, cool against the encroaching day,There is no murmuring water, save the gushOf my clear fluted notes; and in the hushBlows never a wind, save that which through my reedPuffs out before the rain of notes can speedUpon the air, with that calm breath of artThat mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly,Where inspiration seeks its native sky.You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake,The sun's own mirror which I love to take,Silent beneath your starry flowers, tellHow here I cut the hollow rushes, wellTamed by my skill, when on the glaucous goldOf distant lawns about their fountain coldA living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave;And at the first slow notes my panpipes gaveThese flocking swans, these naiads, rather, flyOr dive. Noon burns inert and tawny dry,Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped awayFrom me who seek in song the real A.Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight,O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light,With, lilies, one of you for innocence.Other than their lips' delicate pretence,The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers,My breast, I know not how to tell, discoversThe bitten print of some immortal's kiss.But hush! a mystery so great as thisI dare not tell, save to my double reed,Which, sharer of my every joy and need,Dreams down its cadenced monologues that weFalsely confuse the beauties that we seeWith the bright palpable shapes our song creates:My flute, as loud as passion modulates,Purges the common dream of flank and breast,Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed,Of every empty and monotonous line.

Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign,A reed once more beside our trysting-lake.Proud of my music, let me often makeA song of goddesses and see their rapeProfanely done on many a painted shape.So when the grape's transparent juice I drain,I quell regret for pleasures past and feignA new real grape. For holding towards the skyThe empty skin, I blow it tight and lieDream-drunk till evening, eyeing it.Tell o'erRemembered joys and plump the grape once more.Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleamWho cool no mortal fever in the streamCrying to the woods the rage of their desire:And their bright hair went down in jewelled fireWhere crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly.I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie,Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet,Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet.I seize and run with them, nor part the pair,Breaking this covert of frail petals, whereRoses drink scent of the sun and our light play'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day.I love that virginal fury--ah, the wildThrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled,Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that searIts nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear!Contagiously through my linked pair it fliesWhere innocence in either, struggling, dies,Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew.Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grewSo rash that I must needs the sheaf divideOf ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied.For as I leaned to stifle in the hairOf one my passionate laughter (taking careWith a stretched finger, that her innocenceMight stain with her companion's kindling senseTo touch the younger little one, who layChild-like unblushing) my ungrateful preySlips from me, freed by passion's sudden death,Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath.

Let it pass! others of their hair shall twistA rope to drag me to those joys I missed.See how the ripe pomegranates bursting redTo quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled;So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire,Flows for the swarming legions of desire.At evening, when the woodland green turns goldAnd ashen grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold!Red Etna glows, by Venus visited,Walking the lava with her snowy treadWhene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die.I hold the goddess!Ah, sure penalty!

But the unthinking soul and body swoonAt last beneath the heavy hush of noon.Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouthSifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouthDream planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star.Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.