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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FAUN AND MAIDEN (SUGGESTED BY MARBLE GROUP, UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE), by                    
First Line: O faun, still whispering in the maiden's ear
Last Line: O maiden tell—how soon, how soon, how soon!
Subject(s): Sculpture & Sculptors


OFAUN, still whispering in the maiden's ear,
While hard she hearkens in a breathless hush,
With what bewitching words enchantest her,
To make her cheek even through the marble flush;
Hath some god sent thee as his messenger

To say he loves her, nor can brook to lose
The honeyed hours in languorous delay,
But bids her straight some trysting-place to choose,
Whether it be some daisied sward by day,
Or deep glen's mossy glade that morn bedews,

Or blue-hazed hyacinth-bank, where now to glean
Their waxen stores, broad-girthed bees are intent,
To whose bold viol-notes oft intervene
The smuggled silences of their descent
Down the sweet bells that shake when they have been,

Or harvest-fragrant, sickle-reaped corn-field,
On whose shorn stubble and long files of sheaves
The moon's disc rises like a dinted shield,
Or dreaming forest tremulous with leaves,
Where to her lover's longing arms she'll yield,

Or when through waves translucent their forms glow
'Gainst dazzling clouds of the reflected dawn,
Or wasted by their warmth in long streams flow
Around them—that were spread as sheets of lawn—
Some vernal shade's last vestiges of snow?

When, when? at morn or eve or night, or noon,
Shall old Time's measured pulse most madly beat
As in that swift embrace at once they swoon
With icy tremor and entrancing heat;
O Maiden tell—how soon, how soon, how soon!





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