Faun, the illusion flees from the cold, blue eyes
Of the chaster nymph like a fountain gushing tears:
But the other, all in sighs, you say, compares
To a hot wind through the fleece that blows at noon?

Exhaled from my twin pipes and swift to drain
The melody in arid drifts of rain,
Is the visible, serene and fictive air
Of inspiration rising as in prayer

To the slow prelude that the pipes were playing,
This flight of swans no! naiads rose in a shower
Day burns inert in the tawny hour

Weighed down by the body, wordless, struck dumb,
To noon's proud silence must at last succumb:
And so, let me sleep, oblivious of sin,
Stretched out on the thirsty sand, drinking in
The bountiful rays of the wine-growing star!

I'll see the shade that you now are.


L'après-midi d'un faune (or The Afternoon of a Faun)
by Stéhane Mallarmé 1876


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