The Faun. A Fragment by Bliss Carman — Read

I will go out to grass with that old King, / For I am weary of clothes and cooks. / I long to lie along the banks of brooks, / And watch the boughs above me sway and swing. / Come, I will pluck off custom's livery, / Nor longer be a lackey to old Time. / Time shall serve me, and at my feet shall fling / The spoil of listless minutes. I shall climb / The wild trees for my food, and run / Through dale and upland as a fox runs free, / Laugh for cool joy and sleep i' the warm sun, / And men will call me mad, like that old King.

For I am woodland-natured, and have made / Dryads my bedfellows, / And I have played / With the sleek Naiads in the splash of pools / And made a mock of gowned and trousered fools. / Helen, none knows / Better than thou how like a Faun I strayed. / And I am half Faun now, and my heart goes / Out to the forest and the crack of twigs, / The drip of wet leaves and the low soft laughter / Of brooks that chuckle o'er old mossy jests / And say them over to themselves, the nests / Of squirrels and the holes the chipmunk digs, / Where through the branches the slant rays / Dapple with sunlight the leaf-matted ground, / And the wind comes with blown vesture rustling after, / And through the woven lattice of crisp sound / A bird's song lightens like a maiden's face.