{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_56008/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_56008","id":"gutenberg_56008","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56008","summary":null,"tags":["Category: French Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Category: Romance","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Occitan poetry -- Translations into English"],"text":"[Illustration:\n\n                                  THE\n                                 CAMEO\n                                SERIES]\n\n\n                                Mir\u00e8io\n\n\n\n\n                           IN SAME SERIES.\n\n\n                        THE LADY FROM THE SEA.\n                          BY HENRIK IBSEN.\n\n                        A LONDON PLANE TREE.\n                          BY AMY LEVY.\n\n                        WORDSWORTH\u2019S GRAVE.\n                          BY WILLIAM WATSON.\n\n                        IPHIGENIA IN DELPHI.\n                          BY RICHARD GARNETT.\n\n                     [Illustration: Remote La CRAU]\n\n\n\n\n                                Mir\u00e8io.\n\n                          _A PROVEN\u00c7AL POEM._\n\n                                  by\n                           FR\u00c9D\u00c9RIC MISTRAL.\n\n                             Translated by\n                        Harriet Waters Preston.\n\n                             CAMEO SERIES\n\n                    T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQ.\n                          LONDON E.C. MDCCCXC\n\n\n\n\n                            _Frontispiece_\n\n                                 _by_\n\n                            JOSEPH PENNELL.\n\n\n\n\n                            _To Lamartine._\n\n                  [Illustration: text decoration]\n\n\n    _Te consecre Mir\u00e8io: es moun cor e moun amo,_\n      _Es la flour de mis an._\n    _Es un raisin de crau qu\u2019em\u00e9 touto sa ramo,_\n      _Te porge un pa\u00efsan._\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    _I offer thee Mir\u00e8io: it is my heart and spirit,_\n      _The blossom of my years._\n    _A cluster of Crau grapes, with all the green leaves near it,_\n      _To thee a peasant bears._\n\n\n\n\n_Preface to the English Edition._\n\n                  [Illustration: text decoration]\n\n\nThirty odd years have come and gone since the curious _litterateurs_ of\nParis were excited and charmed by the apparition of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Mistral\u2019s\n\u201cMir\u00e8io.\u201d A pastoral poem in twelve cantos, composed in the dialect of\nthe _Bouches du Rh\u00f4ne_, and first issued by an obscure bookseller at\nAvignon, it was produced before the great literary world with a parallel\nFrench version of the author\u2019s own, very singular and rather _sauvage_\nas French, but exceedingly bold, picturesque, and poetic, and the poem\nhad the further advantage of a most eloquent and sympathetic\nintroduction in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of September 15, 1859, by\nSaint-Ren\u00e9 Taillandier.\n\nThe employment of a rustic southern dialect for the purposes of poetic\nnarrative was by no means so unheard-of a thing, even to the men of that\ngeneration, as was indirectly assumed by the first reviewer of \u201cMir\u00e8io.\u201d\nHad not Jacques Jasmin, the immortal barber of Agen, written, in his own\nlocal _patois_, \u201cFran\u00e7onette,\u201d and \u201cThe Blind Girl of Castel Cuill\u00e9,\u201d\nand the inimitable \u201cPapillotes\u201d? But the work of Mistral, along with\nthat of the school which he claimed to represent, and of which he was\neasily chief, was heralded by a certain _fanfare_--it came with a\nspecific and impressive claim of ancient Proven\u00e7al traditions to be\nrevived, and a vast future inaugurated: pretensions which would have\nseemed almost droll to the Gascon Jasmin, with his exquisite humour and\nhis adorable simplicity.\n\nI can do no more than glance in this place at the history of the\nself-styled Proven\u00e7al Revival, the most ambitious and by far the most\nromantic literary adventure of our day. It is an inviting subject, and\nwill one day form an interesting chapter in the long annals of poesy;\nbut the time is not yet fully come for estimating its results, and still\nless, with its greatest champion yet living, for writing its obituary.\n\nJoseph Roumanille, a schoolmaster of St. Remy, near Tarascon, was the\nfather of the movement. He first wrote poems in modern Proven\u00e7al, so the\npleasant legend says, because his old mother could not understand him\nwhen he essayed to read her those which he had written in French.\nDelighted, and, as it would seem, a little amazed at his own success, he\ncame forward as the rightful heir to the long-lapsed inheritance of the\nTroubadours, assumed that the language, whose literary capacities he had\nre-discovered, was essentially the same as theirs, and contrived\nthoroughly to imbue with his own faith in its future a band of clever\nand ardent pupils, among whom, by the will of Heaven, there was one rare\ngenius--Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Mistral, and one wild enthusiast, who was, at the same\ntime, an affluent and pathetic versifier--Th\u00e9odore Aubanel. Animated by\na mystical assurance, hardly less profound than that of Loyola and his\ncompanions upon Montmartre, these knights of song bound themselves by a\nsort of vow, to write in the effete language of the French Academy no\nmore. They constituted themselves a poetic order, and proceeded to adopt\nan elaborate and somewhat fantastic organization. The almost religious\nearnestness which animated them may be judged by the fact that when one\nof the original band, Eug\u00e8ne Garcin--formally saluted by name, along\nwith some half-dozen others, in the sixth canto of \u201cMir\u00e8io\u201d--cooled in\nhis ardour a little, and attempted to point out the factitious and\nimpracticable side of the movement, he was solemnly denounced by Mistral\nas \u201cthe Judas of our little church.\u201d It was a defection of no serious\nmoment, and the revival went its fervid way without Garcin.\n\nThe Proven\u00e7al poets agreed to call themselves _felibre_, nobody knows to\nthis day exactly why. There are those who say that the word means _homme\nde foi libre_, that is, emancipated from all slavish literary\ntradition--as Mistral and his first associates undoubtedly were; there\nare sticklers for antiquity and a direct descent from the Latin, who\nmaintain the derivation _qui facit libros_. Howbeit the _felibre_ began\nto publish at Avignon in the speech of the district, a periodical, which\nstill, I think, appears at irregular intervals. They constructed a small\ngrammar on the lines of the existing grammars of the ancient \u201cLangue\nd\u2019oc,\u201d especially of Raynouard\u2019s \u201cR\u00e9sum\u00e9 de la Grammaire Romaine,\u201d and\nthey began the compilation of an extensive dictionary, which has never\neven approached completion. They also revived the institution of an\nannual poetic tournament with floral prizes--a silver lily, a golden\nviolet--where the native bards recited their verses, and received their\nrewards, after the supposed manner of the olden time. These jousts were\nusually held in the late summer or the early autumn. There were others\nappointed for the yet more appropriate month of May, which received the\nname of the feast of the _Santo Estello_, or Holy Star,--_memourativo de\nla reneissen\u00e7o dou Gai-Sabe_--to commemorate the renascence of the Gay\nScience. Once in seven years this feast was to be celebrated with\nextraordinary splendour, \u201cin honour\u201d (I continue to quote from the\naddress of Mistral at the Floral Games held at Hy\u00e8res in 1885) \u201cof the\nseven rays of that mysterious star which leads, whithersoever God will,\nour bark with its orange-freight.\u201d That is to say, which determines,\nafter the manner of the Star of Bethlehem, the place where our society\nshall assemble and listen to the pieces entered for competition.\n\nWere it possible for a new language to be created, or a decaying one\nrevived, of determinate purpose, by native genius, fiery enthusiasm and\nunstinted devotion to the cause, that miracle would surely have been\nwrought by the _felibre_ of the _Bouches du Rh\u00f4ne_. But the triumph of a\nlanguage, like that of the kingdom of heaven, is among the things which\ndo not come by observation. It is determined by causes as vast as those\nwhich shape the continents, and quite as independent of the theories of\nindividual men. The order of the Holy Star, was after all only a kind of\nidealized mutual admiration society, and of all its members during a\nfull quarter of a century, three names only have advanced from local\nrenown to anything like general recognition. They are the three names\nalready cited of Roumanille, Aubanel, and Mistral.\n\nThe two former have already passed away, leaving behind them many\ncharming lyrics, but no work of universal and lasting interest. Mistral\nis gloriously young at sixty, able, and let us hope willing, to give us\nin that rich and flowing idiom, which no one else has ever managed with\nsuch mastery as he, many more historical and narrative poems, vivid with\nlocal colour, and teeming with local tradition, like \u201cCalendau\u201d--a\nromance of the last century, which appeared in 1873 and \u201cNerto\u201d--a tale\nof the time of the Popes at Avignon, published in 1884. But it is safe\nto prophesy that neither Mistral nor any other _felibre_ will ever give\nus another \u201cMir\u00e8io\u201d--so spontaneous, artless, and impassioned, so dewy\nwith the memories of the poet\u2019s own childhood on a Proven\u00e7al farm, or\n_mas_, so gay with the laughter and moving with the tears of simple\nfolk, reflecting in so flawless a mirror every change of the seasons,\nevery aspect of the free, primitive, bucolic life of the Mediterranean\nshore.\n\nThe success of Aubanel was perhaps frustrated by the very extravagance\nof his own aims. When we find him at the _f\u00eates_ of Forcalquier in 1875\napostrophizing the arbiters of literary renown in France in terms like\nthese: \u201cSachez que nous sommes un grand peuple, et qu\u2019il n\u2019est plus\ntemps de nous m\u00e9priser. Trente d\u00e9partements parlent notre langue, d\u2019une\nmer \u00e0 l\u2019autre mer, des Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es jusqu\u2019aux Alpes, de Crau \u00e0 Limousin; le\nm\u00eame amour fait battre notre poitrine, l\u2019amour de la terre natale et de\nla langue maternelle.... Sachez que vous serez tomb\u00e9s longtemps alors\nque le Proven\u00e7al, toujours jeune, parlera encore de vous avec piti\u00e9\u201d--we\ncan then understand that Saint-Ren\u00e9 Tallandier, the original sponsor of\nMir\u00e8io, should have made haste to express his grave apprehensions for\nthe sanity of the revivalist movement, and to repudiate in the name of\nthe great Review all countenance of so vast a pretension on behalf of an\n\u201cidiom which had vanished for six hundred years from the battlefield of\nideas.\u201d\n\nOne is reminded of the lament of the late William Barnes that the\ndialect of Dorset had not prevailed in England over the tongue of\nShakespeare. Yet William Barnes, like the _felibre_, wrote poems in the\nlocal _patois_, far more beautiful and pathetic than any which he ever\nproduced in proper English.\n\nMistral himself, with the profounder instincts and wiser judgment of a\nreally large mind, has grown more modest from year to year in his hopes\nconcerning the final harvest of that generous enterprise to which his\nlife and powers have been consecrated. He was not quite able to extend a\nhearty welcome to Alphonse Daudet, when that most humane and sympathetic\nof realists appeared upon the scene with \u201cNuma Roumestan\u201d and the\n\u201cLettres de mon Moulin,\u201d describing in the most pellucid French and with\na fidelity equal to his own, the prose aspect of the life of the South,\nand all the rustic scenes which Mistral had so affectionately poetized.\nAll the _felibre_, indeed, looked askance at Daudet as an intruder, and\nthis is one more sign, if not of the limitations of their leader\u2019s\ngenius, at least of the narrow and ephemeral character of their\ncollective ideal. However, in an address delivered before the\npreviously-mentioned assembly at Hy\u00e8res in 1885--ten years after Aubanel\nhad hurled his fierce defiance at the French Academy--Mistral might have\nbeen heard pleading, with much earnestness and good sense, that French\nand Proven\u00e7al should be kept resolutely distinct, both in the teaching\nof the schools, and in the talk of the people, and that, by way of\npreserving the purity of _both forms of speech_.\n\nHis remarks had an especial appropriateness then and there, because the\nprose work crowned upon that occasion was a series of na\u00efve and highly\ndramatic dialogues, entitled \u201cSc\u00e8nes de la Vie Proven\u00e7ale,\u201d by M. C.\nS\u00e9n\u00e8s, of Toulon, officially known as La Sinse. French of the most\nbarbaric, and Proven\u00e7al of the most pliant, are mixed up in these\ndelightfully comic dialogues exactly as they are upon the lips of the\ncommon folk. It is the most amusing, perhaps the only distinctly amusing\nwork which the school of the _felibre_ has ever produced, and anybody\nwho reads French may read and have a hearty laugh over it. And I may\nadd, from my own experience, that a very short residence in the ancient\nProvincia is enough to show that the local idiom is much more\nintelligible phonetically than it looks at first sight upon paper.\n\nI may be mistaken, but I take the truth to be that modern Proven\u00e7al is,\nafter all, a dialect only, and not, as was so long and passionately\nclaimed by the confederate poets, a language. As a matter of fact, it\nresembles the plastic idiom of the ancient Troubadours very little more\nthan it resembles modern French, and certainly no more than it resembles\nGascon, Catalan, or the Italian of the Western Riviera. All the Romance\ndialects, however fallen from literary honour, or untamed by literary\nlaw, are closely akin, and bear marks, even in their utmost degradation,\nof the same illustrious pedigree. They are like certain wild flowers,\nthe pimpernel, the anemone, whose species can never be mistaken, but\nwhose colours present, and that spontaneously, an almost infinite\nvariety.\n\nThe poem of \u201cMir\u00e8io,\u201d in parallel French and Proven\u00e7al, first fell in my\nway in the summer of 1871; and I admire my own audacity in immediately\nattempting to turn it into English verse,[1] almost as much as I do that\nof the men who first preached the Proven\u00e7al crusade against the language\nof Racine and Moli\u00e8re. Of course I knew no more of the idiom in which it\nwas originally composed than could be gathered from a close comparison\nof the same with Mistral\u2019s own French, aided by a smattering of old\nProven\u00e7al. I may plead in extenuation of my effrontery that there was\nvirtually no more to be known at that time, for even the grammar already\nmentioned had not then been published. There is not very much more to be\nknown even now.\n\n [1] Boston, U.S.A., Roberts Bros., 1872.\n\nThe scheme of the Proven\u00e7al verse, though elaborate, and seemingly very\nartificial, was easily enough intelligible to an English ear; more so, I\nshould fancy, than to a Parisian one, on account of its obvious\n_jingle_--or, to speak by the book, the exuberance of its rhymes, and\nthe strength of its tonic accents. The same remark, as is well known,\napplies in a general way to the songs of the Troubadours. Mistral\u2019s\nstanza consists of five eight-syllabled iambic lines with feminine\nrhymes, in groups of two and three, and two twelve-syllabled iambic\nlines, with masculine rhymes. The Quaker poet Whittier had fallen upon a\nsomewhat similar verse, in one of the finest of his earlier\npoems--\u201cLines written at Hampton Beach\u201d:--\n\n    \u201cSo when Time\u2019s veil shall fall asunder,\n      The soul may know\n    No sudden change, no curious wonder,\n    Nor sink the weight of mystery under,\n      But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow.\u201d\n\nBut this is far simpler than Mistral\u2019s.\n\nI did actually make an attempt to transfer this florid measure to our\nown sober English tongue, and that eminent American poet and very\ndistinguished connoisseur in poetic metres, the late Mr. Longfellow,\nonce told me that he greatly wished I had persevered, and that he\nthought it would have been quite possible to render the whole poem in\nthe same way. Perhaps it would have been, to a master of versification,\nlike himself; and for his sake, and out of respect for his opinion, I\nsubjoin the opening stanzas of the poem in Proven\u00e7al, and my own attempt\nto imitate their metre, premising, for the benefit of the unskilled,\nthat in Proven\u00e7al every letter sounds, the vowels as in French, while of\nthe consonants _g_ and _j_ before _e_ and _i_ are pronounced like _ds_,\nand _ch_ always like _ts_. A final vowel is elided, in scanning, before\nanother vowel; and the tonic accent is strongly marked:--\n\n        \u201cCante uno chato de Prouv\u00e8n\u00e7o,\n        Dins lis amour de la jouv\u00e8n\u00e7o,\n    A trav\u00e8s da la Crau, vers la mar, dins li bla,\n        Umble escoulan d\u2019ou grand Oumero,\n        I\u00e9u la vole segui. Coume \u00e8ro\n        R\u00e8n qu\u2019uno chato de Prouv\u00e8n\u00e7o,\n    En foro de la Crau se n\u2019es gaire parla.\n        Emai soun front noun lusigu\u00e8sse\n        Que de jouinesso; emai n\u2019ag\u00f9esse\n    Ni diad\u00e8mo d\u2019or ni mant\u00e8u de Damas,\n        Vole qu\u2019en gl\u00f2ri fugue aussado\n        Coune uno r\u00e8ino, e caressado\n        P\u00e8r nosto lengo mespresado\n    Car cantan que p\u00e8r vautre, o pastre e g\u00e8nt di mas!\u201d\n\nOr thus:--\n\n          \u201cA maiden of Provence I sing:\n          I tell the love-tale of her spring,\n    Across La Crau\u2019s wide wheat-fields follow her to the sea.\n          Mine be the daring aspiration\n          To sing of her in Homer\u2019s fashion,\n          My lady of the lowly station,\n    Unknown beyond the prairies of lone La Crau was she.\n\n          What though her brow was never crowned\n          Save with the youth that rayed it round?\n    What though she bore no golden crown and wore no damask cloak?\n          Yet I would have her raised in glory\n          As a queen is, and set before me\n          In our poor speech to tell her story,\n    Because I sing for you alone, shepherds and farmer-folk!\u201d\n\nTo me the thought of keeping this up for twelve cantos was simply\nappalling. Even in my trial stanzas, as will be seen, I had sacrificed\nmany of the feminine rhymes; and I am now inclined to think, though I\nspeak under correction, that Mistral himself and his followers availed\nthemselves pretty liberally of the license which the classic Troubadours\nare well known to have employed, of manipulating their final syllables\nmore or less in order to make them rhyme.\n\nThe measure finally adopted--ten-syllabled iambic lines with consecutive\nrhymes, usually masculine but sometimes feminine--was essentially the\nsame as that employed by William Morris in the \u201cEarthly Paradise.\u201d That\nbeautiful work was then new, and very popular in America, and it seemed,\nand I own that to me it seems still, to present almost the ideal of\nEnglish narrative poetry. But I broke my version into stanzas of six\nlines, by way, I suppose, of making it look more like the original.\n\nIn those comparatively early days, I also held, and rather doated on, a\ntheory of my own about what are called imperfect rhymes. I was persuaded\nthat rhymes where the consonant sounds correspond while the vowel sounds\nmerely approximate--like _wreck_ and _make_, _gone_ and _son_--are the\ncounterpart on the one hand of assonances upon the other, in which the\nvowels correspond but not the consonants; that their relation to perfect\nrhymes is exactly that of minor to major harmonies, and that they\nrelieve the ear in a long-rhymed poem, no less than the latter in a\nmusical composition. Though very naturally censured for the freedom with\nwhich I exercised this caprice in my version of \u201cMir\u00e8io,\u201d I still clung\nto it tenaciously as late as 1880, when I made a version of the Georgics\nof Vergil. I am by no means certain even now that there is not sound\nmusical justification for the idea, but I have grown conservative with\nyears, as we are all apt to do, and I cherish an ever-increasing respect\nfor _law_--literary and other. In the present edition of my \u201cMir\u00e8io,\u201d I\nhave therefore reformed and, so to speak, _ranged_ some scores of these\nlicentious rhymes, aiming always, at the same time, at coming closer to\nthe meaning of the original, as I now understand it, even if need be, at\nthe sacrifice of some picturesqueness in the English line.\n\nI had always beside me when I first made my version, the English prose\ntranslation of \u201cMir\u00e8io,\u201d by Mr. C. H. Grant, to which I feel myself to\nhave been not a little indebted. In artlessness of narrative, in vigour\nand felicity of expression, I have never hoped to surpass this unrhymed\nand unmeasured version, which needed, as it seemed to me, only a\nrhythmic form to render it worthy of the essentially _musical_ original.\n\nA second English translation, by H. Crichton, with which I became\nacquainted subsequently, had been published by Macmillan and Co.,\nLondon, in 1868. This version was a metrical one, and fairly close, but\nit failed, I think, in catching, not the music merely, but the rural\nfreshness and fragrance, the genuinely bucolic spirit of the Proven\u00e7al.\nIt is because, I venture to hope, that my version, with all its faults,\ndoes reflect something of all this, that a new edition of it is offered\nto the public after so long a time.\n\n    HARRIET WATERS PRESTON.\n\n    BRUSSELS,\n    _April, 1890_.\n\n\n\n\n_Contents._\n\n                  [Illustration: text decoration]\n\n\nCANTO                                                               PAGE\n\n   I. _Lotus Farm_                                                    21\n\n  II. _The Leaf-Picking_                                              37\n\n III. _The Cocooning_                                                 50\n\n  IV. _The Suitors_                                                   67\n\n   V. _The Battle_                                                    81\n\n  VI. _The Witch_                                                     95\n\n VII. _The Old Men_                                                  110\n\nVIII. _La Crau_                                                      124\n\n  IX. _The Muster_                                                   136\n\n   X. _Camargue_                                                     147\n\n  XI. _The Saints_                                                   159\n\n XII. _Death_                                                        174\n\n\n\n\nCANTO I.\n\n_Lotus Farm._\n\n\n    I sing the love of a Proven\u00e7al maid;\n    How through the wheat-fields of La Crau she strayed,\n    Following the fate that drew her to the sea.\n    Unknown beyond remote La Crau was she;\n    And I, who tell the rustic tale of her,\n    Would fain be Homer\u2019s humble follower.\n\n    What though youth\u2019s aure\u00f3le was her only crown?\n    And never gold she wore nor damask gown?\n    I\u2019ll build her up a throne out of my song,\n    And hail her queen in our despis\u00e8d tongue.\n    Mine be the simple speech that ye all know,\n    Shepherds and farmer-folk of lone La Crau.\n\n    God of my country, who didst have Thy birth\n    Among poor shepherds when Thou wast on earth,\n    Breathe fire into my song! Thou knowest, my God,\n    How, when the lusty summer is abroad,\n    And figs turn ripe in sun and dew, comes he,--\n    Brute, greedy man,--and quite despoils the tree.\n\n    Yet on that ravaged tree thou savest oft\n    Some little branch inviolate aloft,\n    Tender and airy up against the blue,\n    Which the rude spoiler cannot win unto:\n    Only the birds shall come and banquet there,\n    When, at St. Magdalene\u2019s, the fruit is fair.\n\n    Methinks I see yon airy little bough:\n    It mocks me with its freshness even now;\n    The light breeze lifts it, and it waves on high\n    Fruitage and foliage that cannot die.\n    Help me, dear God, on our Proven\u00e7al speech,\n    To soar until the birds\u2019 own home I reach!\n\n    Once, then, beside the poplar-bordered Rhone,\n    There lived a basket-weaver and his son,\n    In a poor hut set round with willow-trees\n    (For all their humble wares were made from these);\n    And sometimes they from farm to farm would wend,\n    And horses\u2019 cribs and broken baskets mend.\n\n    And so one evening, as they trudged their round\n    With osier bundles on their shoulders bound,\n    \u201cFather,\u201d young Vincen said, \u201cthe clouds look wild\n    About old Magalouno\u2019s tower up-piled.\n    If that gray rampart fell, \u2019twould do us harm:\n    We should be drenched ere we had gained the farm.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNay, nay!\u201d the old man said, \u201cno rain to-night!\n    \u2019Tis the sea-breeze that shakes the trees. All right!\n    A western gale were different.\u201d Vincen mused:\n    \u201cAre many ploughs at Lotus farmstead used?\u201d\n    \u201cSix ploughs!\u201d the basket-weaver answered slow:\n    \u201cIt is the finest freehold in La Crau.\n\n    \u201cLook! There\u2019s their olive-orchard, intermixt\n    With rows of vines and almond-trees betwixt.\n    The beauty of it is, that vineyard hath\n    For every day in all the year a path!\n    There\u2019s ne\u2019er another such the beauty is;\n    And in each path are just so many trees.\u201d\n\n    \u201cO heavens! How many hands at harvest-tide\n    So many trees must need!\u201d young Vincen cried.\n    \u201cNay: for \u2019tis almost Hallowmas, you know,\n    When all the girls come flocking in from Baux,\n    And, singing, heap with olives green and dun\n    The sheets and sacks, and call it only fun.\u201d\n\n    The sun was sinking, as old Ambroi said;\n    On high were little clouds a-flush with red;\n    Sideways upon their yok\u00e8d cattle rode\n    The labourers slowly home, each with his goad\n    Erect. Night darkened on the distant moor;\n    \u2019Twas supper-time, the day of toil was o\u2019er.\n\n    \u201cAnd here we are!\u201d the boy cried. \u201cI can see\n    The straw-heaped threshing-floor, so hasten we!\u201d\n    \u201cBut stay!\u201d the other. \u201cNow, as I\u2019m alive,\n    The Lotus Farm\u2019s the place for sheep to thrive,--\n    The pine-woods all the summer, and the sweep\n    Of the great plain in winter. Lucky sheep!\n\n    \u201cAnd look at the great trees that shade the dwelling,\n    And look at that delicious stream forth welling\n    Inside the vivary! And mark the bees!\n    Autumn makes havoc in their colonies;\n    But every year, when comes the bright May weather,\n    Yon lotus-grove a hundred swarms will gather.\u201d\n\n    \u201cAnd one thing more\u201d cried Vincen, eagerly,\n    \u201cThe very best of all, it seems to me,--\n    I mean the maiden, father, who dwells here.\n    Thou canst not have forgotten how, last year,\n    She bade us bring her olive-baskets two,\n    And fit her little one with handles new.\u201d\n\n    So saying, they drew the farm-house door a-nigh,\n    And, in the dewy twilight, saw thereby\n    The maid herself. Distaff in hand she stood,\n    Watching her silk-worms at their leafy food.\n    Then master Ambroi let his osiers fall,\n    And sang out cheerily, \u201cGood-even, all!\u201d\n\n    \u201cFather, the same to you!\u201d the damsel said.\n    \u201cI had come out my distaff-point to thread,\n    It grows so dark. Whence come you now, I pray?\n    From Valabr\u00e8go?\u201d Ambroi answered, \u201cYea.\n    I said, when the fast-coming dark I saw,\n    \u2018We\u2019ll sleep at Lotus Farm upon the straw.\u2019\u201d\n\n    Whereat, with no more words, father and son\n    Hard by upon a roller sat them down,\n    And fell to their own work right busily.\n    A half-made cradle chanced the same to be.\n    Fast through the nimble fingers of the two\n    The supple osier bent and crossed and flew.\n\n    Certes, our Vincen was a comely lad.\n    A bright face and a manly form he had,\n    Albeit that summer he was bare sixteen.\n    Swart were his cheeks; but the dark soil, I ween,\n    Bears the fine wheat, and black grapes make the wine\n    That sets our feet a-dance, our eyes a-shine.\n\n    Full well he knew the osier to prepare,\n    And deftly wrought: but ofttimes to his share\n    Fell coarser work; for he the panniers made\n    Wherewith the farmers use their beasts to lade,\n    And divers kinds of baskets, huge and rough,\n    Handy and light. Ay, he had skill enough!\n\n    And likewise brooms of millet-grass, and such,--\n    And baskets of split-cane. And still his touch\n    Was sure and swift; and all his wares were strong,\n    And found a ready sale the farms among.\n    But now, from fallow field and moorland vast,\n    The labourers were trooping home at last.\n\n    Then hasted sweet Mir\u00e8io to prepare,\n    With her own hands and in the open air,\n    Their evening meal. There was a broad flat stone\n    Served for a table, and she set thereon\n    One mighty dish, where each man plunged his ladle.\n    Our weavers wrought meanwhile upon their cradle.\n\n    Until Ramoun, the master of the farm,\n    Cried, \u201cHow is this?\u201d--brusque was his tone and warm.\n    \u201cCome to your supper, Ambroi: no declining!\n    Put up the crib, my man: the stars are shining.\n    And thou, Mir\u00e8io, run and fetch a bowl:\n    The travellers must be weary, on my soul!\u201d\n\n    Wherefore the basket-weaver, well-content,\n    Rose with his son and to the table went,\n    And sat him down and cut the bread for both;\n    While bright Mir\u00e8io hasted, nothing loth,\n    Seasoned a dish of beans with olive oil,\n    And came and sat before them with a smile.\n\n    Not quite fifteen was this same fair Mir\u00e8io.\n    Ah, me! the purple coast of Font Vi\u00e8io,\n    The hills of Baux, the desolate Crau plain,\n    A shape like hers will hardly see again.\n    Child of the merry sun, her dimpled face\n    Bloomed into laughter with ingenious grace.\n\n    Eyes had she limpid as the drops of dew;\n    And, when she fixed their tender gaze on you,\n    Sorrow was not. Stars in a summer night\n    Are not more softly, innocently bright:\n    And beauteous hair, all waves and rings of jet;\n    And breasts, a double peach, scarce ripened yet.\n\n    Shy, yet a joyous little sprite she was;\n    And, finding all her sweetness in a glass,\n    You would have drained it at a single breath.\n    But to our tale, which somewhat lingereth.\n    When every man his day\u2019s toil had rehearsed\n    (So, at my father\u2019s farm, I heard them first),--\n\n    \u201cNow, Ambroi, for a song!\u201d they all began:\n    \u201cLet us not sleep above our supper, man!\u201d\n    But he, \u201cPeace! peace! My friends, do ye not know\n    On every jester, God, they say, doth blow\n    And sets him spinning like a top along?\n    Sing yourselves, lads,--you who are young and strong.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNo jest, good father, none!\u201d they answered him.\n    \u201cBut, since the wine o\u2019erflows your goblet\u2019s brim,\n    Drink with us, Ambroi, and then to your song!\u201d\n    \u201cAy, ay, when I was young--but that was long\n    Ago--I\u2019d sing to any man\u2019s desire;\n    But now my voice is but a broken lyre.\u201d\n\n    \u201cBut, Master Ambroi,\u201d urged Mir\u00e8io,\n    \u201cSing one song, please, because \u2019twill cheer us so.\u201d\n    \u201cMy pretty one,\u201d the weaver said again,\n    \u201cOnly the husks of my old voice remain;\n    But if these please you, I cannot say nay,\u201d\n    And drained his goblet, and began straightway:--\n\n\nI.\n\n          Our Captain was Bailly Suffren;\n            We had sailed from Toulon,\n          Five hundred sea-faring Proven\u00e7aux,\n            Stout-hearted and strong:\n\n    \u2019Twas the sweet hope of meeting the English that made our hearts burn,\n    And till we had thrashed them we vowed we would never return.\n\n\nII.\n\n          But all the first month of our cruise\n            We saw never a thing\n          From the shrouds, save hundreds and hundreds\n            Of gulls on the wing;\n    And in the next dolorous month, we\u2019d a tempest to fight,\n    And had to be bailing out water by day and by night.\n\n\nIII.\n\n          By the third, we were driven to madness\n            At meeting no foe\n          For our thundering cannon to sweep\n            From the ocean. When lo!\n    \u201cHands aloft!\u201d Captain cried. At the maintop one heard the command,\n    And the long Arab coast on the lee-bow intently he scanned.\n\n\nIV.\n\n          Till, \u201cGod\u2019s thunder!\u201d he cried. \u201cThree big vessels\n            Bear down on us strong;\n          Run the guns to the ports! Blaze away!\u201d\n            Shouted Bailly Suffren.\n    \u201cSharp\u2019s the word, gallant lads! Our figs of Antibes they shall test,\n    And see how they like those,\u201d Captain said, \u201cere we offer the rest!\u201d\n\n\nV.\n\n          A crash fit to deafen! Before\n            The words left his lips\n          We had sent forty balls through the hulls\n            Of the Englishers\u2019 ships!\n    One was done for already. And now the guns only heard we,\n    The cracking of wood and perpetual groan of the sea.\n\n\nVI.\n\n          And now we were closing. Oh, rapture!\n            We lay alongside,\n          Our gallant commander stood cool\n            On the deck, and he cried,\n    \u201cWell done, my brave boys! But enough! Cease your firing, I say,\n    For the time has come now to anoint them with oil of Aix.\u201d\n\n\nVII.\n\n          Then we sprang to our dirks and our hatchets,\n            As they had been toys;\n          And, grapnel in hand, the Proven\u00e7al\n            Cried, \u201cBoard \u2019em, my boys!\u201d\n    A shout and a leap, and we stood on the Englishers\u2019 deck;\n    And then, ah, \u2019twas then we were ready our vengeance to wreak!\n\n\nVIII.\n\n          Then, oh, the great slaughter! The crash\n            Of the mainmast ensuing!\n          And the blows and the turmoil of men\n            Fighting on \u2019mid the ruin!\n    More than one wild Proven\u00e7al I saw seize a foe in his place,\n    And hug till he strained his own life out in deadly embrace.\n\n    And then old Ambroi paused. \u201cAh, yes!\u201d said he,\n    \u201cYou do not quite believe my tale, I see.\n    Nathless these things all happened, understand:\n    Did I not hold the tiller with this hand?\n    Were I to live a thousand years, I say,\n    I should remember what befell that day.\u201d\n\n    \u201cWhat, father, you were there and saw the fun?\u201d\n    The labourers cried in mischief. \u201cThree to one,\n    They flattened you like scythes beneath the hammer!\u201d\n    \u201cWho, me? The English?\u201d the old tar \u2019gan stammer,\n    Upspringing; then, with smile of fine disdain,\n    Took up the burden of his tale again:--\n\n\nIX.\n\n          So with blood-dabbled feet fought we on\n            Four hours, until dark.\n          Then, our eyes being cleared of the powder,\n            We missed from our bark\n    Fivescore men. But the king of the English lost ships of renown:\n    Three good vessels with all hands on board to the bottom went down.\n\n\nX.\n\n          And now, our sides riddled with shot,\n            Once more homeward hie we,\n          Yards splintered, mast shivered, sails tattered;\n            But brave Captain Bailly\n    Spake us words of good cheer. \u201cMy comrades, ye have done well!\n    To the great king of Paris the tale of your valour I\u2019ll tell!\u201d\n\n\nXI.\n\n          \u201cWell said, Captain dear!\u201d we replied:\n            \u201cSure the king will hear you\n          When you speak. But for us, his poor mariners,\n            What will he do,--\n    Who left our all gladly, our homes and our firesides,\u201d we said,\n    \u201cFor his sake, and lo! now in those homes there is crying for bread?\n\n\nXII.\n\n          \u201cAh, Admiral, never forget\n            When all bow before you,\n          With a love like the love of your seamen\n            None will adore you!\n    Why, say but the word, and, ere homeward our footsteps we turn,\n    Aloft on the tips of our fingers a king you are borne!\u201d\n\n\nXIII.\n\n          A Martigau, mending his nets\n            One eve, made this ditty.\n          Our admiral bade us farewell,\n            And sought the great city.\n    Were they wroth with his glory up there at the court? Who can say?\n    But we saw our beloved commander no more from that day!\n\n    A timely ending thus the minstrel made,\n    Else the fast-coming tears his tale had stayed;\n    But for the labourers--they sat intent,\n    Mute all, with parted lips, and forward bent\n    As if enchanted. Even when he was done,\n    For a brief space they seemed to hearken on.\n\n    \u201cAnd such were aye the songs,\u201d said the old man,\n    \u201cSung in the good old days when Martha span.\n    Long-winded, maybe, and the tunes were queer.\n    But, youngsters, what of that? They suit my ear.\n    Your new French airs mayhap may finer be;\n    But no one understands the words, you see!\u201d\n\n    Whereon the men, somewhat as in a dream,\n    From table rose, and to the running stream\n    They led their patient mules, six yoke in all.\n    The long vine-branches from a trellised wall\n    Waved o\u2019er them waiting, and, from time to time,\n    Humming some fragment of the weaver\u2019s rhyme.\n\n    Mir\u00e8io tarried, but not quite alone.\n    A social spirit had the little one,\n    And she and Vincen chatted happily.\n    Twas a fair sight, the two young heads to see\n    Meeting and parting, coming still and going\n    Like aster-flowers when merry winds are blowing.\n\n    \u201cNow tell me, Vincen,\u201d thus Mir\u00e8io,\n    \u201cIf oftentimes as you and Ambroi go\n    Bearing your burdens the wild country over,\n    Some haunted castle you do not discover,\n    Or joyous f\u00eate, or shining palace meet,\n    While the home-nest is evermore our seat.\u201d\n\n    \u201c\u2019Tis even so, my lady, as you think.\n    Why, currants quench the thirst as well as drink!\n    What though we brave all weathers in our toil?\n    Sure, we have joys that rain-drops cannot spoil\n    The sun of noon beats fiercely on the head,\n    But there are wayside trees unnumber\u00e8d.\n\n    \u201cAnd whenso\u2019er return the summer hours,\n    And olive-trees are all bedecked with flowers,\n    We hunt the whitening orchards curiously,\n    Still following the scent, till we descry\n    In the hot noontide, by its emerald flash,\n    The tiny cantharis upon the ash.\n\n    \u201cThe shops will buy the same. Or off we tramp\n    And gather red-oak apples in the swamp,\n    Or beat the pond for leeches. Ah, that\u2019s grand!\n    You need nor bait nor hook, but only stand\n    And strike the water, and then one by one\n    They come and seize your legs, and all is done.\n\n    \u201cAnd thou wert never at Li Santo even!\n    Dear heart! The singing there must be like heaven.\n    \u2019Tis there they bring the sick from all about\n    For healing; and the church is small, no doubt:\n    But, ah, what cries they lift! what vows they pay\n    To the great saints! We saw it one f\u00eate-day.\n\n    \u201cIt was the year of the great miracle.\n    My God, that was a sight! I mind it well.\n    A feeble boy, beautiful as Saint John,\n    Lay on the pavement, sadly calling on\n    The saints to give sight to his poor blind eyes,\n    And promising his pet lamb in sacrifice.\n\n    \u201c\u2018My little lamb, with budding horns!\u2019 he said,\n    \u2018Dear saints!\u2019 How we all wept! Then from o\u2019erhead\n    The blessed reliquaries came down slowly,\n    Above the throng\u00e8d people bending lowly,\n    And crying, \u2018Come, great saints, mighty and good!\n    Come, save!\u2019 The church was like a wind-swept wood.\n\n    \u201cThen the godmother held the child aloft,\n    Who spread abroad his fingers pale and soft,\n    And passionately grasped the reliquaries\n    That held the bones of the three blessed Maries;\n    Just as a drowning man, who cannot swim,\n    Will clutch a plank the sea upheaves to him.\n\n    \u201cAnd then, oh! then,--I saw it with these eyes,--\n    By faith illumined, the blind boy outcries,\n    \u2018I see the sacred relics, and I see\n    Grandmother all in tears! Now haste,\u2019 said he,\n    \u2018My lambkin with the budding horns to bring\n    To the dear saints for a thank-offering!\u2019\n\n    \u201cBut thou, my lady, God keep thee, I pray,\n    Handsome and happy as thou art to-day!\n    Yet if a lizard, wolf, or horrid snake\n    Ever should wound thee with its fang, betake\n    Thyself forthwith to the most holy saints,\n    Who cure all ills and hearken all complaints.\u201d\n\n    So the hours of the summer evening passed.\n    Hard-by the big-wheeled cart its shadow cast\n    On the white yard. Afar arose and fell\n    The frequent tinkle of a little bell\n    In the dark marsh: a nightingale sang yonder;\n    An owl made dreamy, sorrowful rejoinder.\n\n    \u201cNow, since the night is moonlit, so the mere\n    And trees are glorified, wilt thou not hear,\u201d\n    The boy besought, \u201cthe story of a race\n    In which I hoped to win the prize?\u201d--\u201cAh, yes!\u201d\n    The little maiden sighed; and, more than glad,\n    Still gazed with parted lips upon the lad.\n\n    \u201cWell, then, Mir\u00e8io, once at Nismes,\u201d he said,\n    \u201cThey had foot-races on the esplanade;\n    And on a certain day a crowd was there\n    Collected, thicker than a shock of hair.\n    Some shoeless, coatless, hatless, were to run:\n    The others only came to see the fun.\n\n    \u201cWhen all at once upon the scene appears\n    One Lagalanto, prince of foot-racers.\n    In all Provence, and even in Italy,\n    The fleetest-footed far behind left he.\n    Yes: Lagalanto, the great Marseillais,--\n    Thou wilt have heard his name before to-day.\n\n    \u201cA leg, a thigh, he had would not look small\n    By John of Cossa\u2019s, the great seneschal;\n    And in his dresser many a pewter plate,\n    With all his victories carved thereon in state;\n    And you\u2019d have said, to see his scarfs, my lady,\n    A wainscot all festooned with rainbows had he.\n\n    \u201cThe other runners, of whate\u2019er condition,\n    Threw on their clothes at this dread apparition:\n    The game was up when Lagalanto came.\n    Only one stout-limbed lad, Lou Cri by name,\n    Who into Nismes had driven cows that day,\n    Durst challenge the victorious Marseillais.\n\n    \u201cWhereon, \u2018Oh, bah!\u2019 cried foolish little I\n    (Just think!--I only chanced to stand thereby),\n    \u2018I can run too!\u2019 Forthwith they all surround me:\n    \u2018Run, then!\u2019 Alas! my foolish words confound me;\n    For I had run with partridges alone,\n    And only the old oaks for lookers-on.\n\n    \u201cBut now was no escape. \u2018My poor boy, hasten,\u2019\n    Says Lagalanto, \u2018and your latchets fasten.\u2019\n    Well, so I did. And the great man meanwhile\n    Drew o\u2019er his mighty muscles, with a smile,\n    A pair of silken hose, whereto were sewn\n    Ten tiny golden bells of sweetest tone.\n\n    \u201cSo \u2019twas we three. Each set between his teeth\n    A bit of willow, thus to save his breath;\n    Shook hands all round; then, one foot on the line,\n    Trembling and eager we await the sign\n    For starting. It is given. Off we fly;\n    We scour the plain like mad,--\u2019tis you! \u2019tis I!\n\n    \u201cWrapped in a cloud of dust, with smoking hair,\n    We strain each nerve. Ah, what a race was there!\n    They thought we should have won the goal abreast,\n    Till I, presumptuous, sprang before the rest:\n    And that was my undoing; for I dropped\n    Pale, dying as it seemed. But never stopped\n\n    \u201cThe others. On, on, on, with steady gait,\n    Just like the pasteboard horses at Aix f\u00eate.\n    The famous Marseillais thought he must win\n    (They used to say of him he had no spleen);\n    But, ah! my lady, on that day of days,\n    He found his man,--Lou Cri of Mouri\u00e8s.\n\n    \u201cFor now they pass beyond the gazing line,\n    And almost touch the goal. O beauty mine!\n    Couldst thou have seen Lou Cri leap forward then!\n    Never, I think, in mountain, park, or glen,\n    A stag, a hare, so fleet of foot you\u2019d find.\n    Howled like a wolf the other, just behind.\n\n    \u201cLou Cri is victor!--hugs the post for joy.\n    Then all of Nismes comes flocking round the boy,\n    To learn the birthplace of this wondrous one.\n    The pewter plate is flashing in the sun,\n    The hautboys flourish, cymbals clang apace,\n    As he receives the guerdon of the race.\u201d\n\n    \u201cAnd Lagalanto?\u201d asks Mir\u00e8io.\n    \u201cWhy, he upon the ground was sitting low,\n    Powdered with dust, the shifting folk among,\n    Clasping his knees. With shame his soul was wrung\n    And, with the drops that from his forehead fell,\n    Came tears of bitterness unspeakable.\n\n    \u201cLou Cri approached, and made a modest bow.\n    \u2018Brother, let\u2019s to the ale-house arbour now,\n    Behind the amphitheatre. Why borrow,\n    Upon this festive day, tears for the morrow?\n    The money left we\u2019ll drink together thus:\n    There\u2019s sunshine yet enough for both of us.\u2019\n\n    \u201cThen trembling rose the runner of Marseilles,\n    And from his limbs made haste to tear away\n    The silken hose, the golden bells. \u2018Here, lad!\u2019\n    Raising his pallid face, \u2018take them!\u2019 he said.\n    \u2018I am grown old; youth decks thee like a swan;\n    So put the strong man\u2019s gear with honour on.\u2019\n\n    \u201cHe turned, stricken like an ash the storm bereaves\n    In summer-time of all its tower of leaves.\n    The king of runners vanished from the place;\n    And never more ran he in any race,\n    Nor even leaped on the inflated hide,\n    In games at Saint John\u2019s or St. Peter\u2019s tide.\u201d\n\n    So Vincen told the story, waxing warm,\n    Of all he\u2019d seen, before the Lotus Farm.\n    His cheeks grew red, his eyes were full of light;\n    He waved his hand to point his speech aright,--\n    Abundant was the same as showers in May\n    That fall upon a field of new-mown hay.\n\n    The crickets, chirruping amid the dew,\n    Paused more than once to listen. Often, too,\n    The bird of evening, the sweet nightingale,\n    Kept silence; thrilling so at Vincen\u2019s tale,\n    As aye she harked her leafy perch upon,\n    She might have kept awake until the dawn.\n\n    \u201cOh, mother!\u201d cried Mir\u00e8io, \u201csurely never\n    Was weaver-lad so marvellously clever!\n    I love to sleep, dear, on a winter night;\n    But now I cannot,--it is all too light.\n    Ah, just one story more before we go,\n    For I could pass a lifetime listening so!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCANTO II.\n\n_The Leaf-picking._\n\n\n    Sing, magnarello, merrily,\n      As the green leaves you gather!\n    In their third sleep the silk-worms lie,\n      And lovely is the weather\n    Like brown bees that in open glades\n      From rosemary gather honey,\n    The mulberry-trees swarm full of maids,\n      Glad as the air is sunny!\n\n\n    It chanced one morn--it was May\u2019s loveliest--\n    Mir\u00e8io gathered leaves among the rest.\n    It chanced, moreover, on that same May morning,\n    The little gypsy, for her own adorning,\n    Had cherries in her ears, for rings, suspended,\n    Just as our Vincen\u2019s footsteps thither tended.\n\n    Like Latin seaside people everywhere,\n    He wore a red cap on his raven hair,\n    With a cock\u2019s feather gayly set therein;\n    And, prancing onward, with a stick made spin\n    The flints from wayside stone-heaps, and set flying\n    The lazy adders in his pathway lying.\n\n    When suddenly, from the straight, leafy alley,\n    \u201cWhither so fast?\u201d a voice comes musically.\n    Mir\u00e8io\u2019s. Vincen darts beneath the trees,\n    Looks up, and soon the merry maiden sees.\n    Perched on a mulberry-tree, she eyed the lad\n    Like some gray-crested lark, and he was glad.\n\n    \u201cHow then, Mir\u00e8io, comes the picking on?\n    Little by little, all will soon be done!\n    May I not help thee?\u201d--\u201cThat were very meet,\u201d\n    She said, and laughed upon her airy seat.\n    Sprang Vincen like a squirrel from the clover,\n    Ran nimbly up the tree, and said, moreover--\n\n    \u201cNow since old Master Ramoun hath but thee,\n    Come down, I pray, and strip the lower tree!\n    I\u2019ll to the top!\u201d As busily the maiden\n    Wrought on, she murmured, \u201cHow the soul doth gladden\n    To have good company! There\u2019s little joy\n    In lonely work!\u201d--\u201cAy is there!\u201d said the boy:\n\n    \u201cFor when in our old hut we sit alone,\n    Father and I, and only hear the Rhone\n    Rush headlong o\u2019er the shingle, \u2019tis most drear!\n    Not in the pleasant season of the year,\n    For then upon our travels we are bound,\n    And trudge from farm to farm the country round.\n\n    \u201cBut when the holly-berries have turned red,\n    And winter comes, and nights are long,\u201d he said,\n    \u201cAnd sitting by the dying fire we catch\n    Whistle or mew of goblin at the latch;\n    And I must wait till bed-time there with him,\n    Speaking but seldom, and the room so dim,\u201d--\n\n    Broke in the happy girl, unthinkingly,\n    \u201cAh! but your mother, Vincen, where is she?\u201d\n    \u201cMother is dead.\u201d The two were still awhile:\n    Then he, \u201cBut Vinceneto could beguile\n    The time when she was there. A little thing,\n    But she could keep the hut.\u201d--\u201cI\u2019m wondering--\n\n    \u201cYou have a sister, Vincen?\u201d--\u201cThat have I!\n    A merry lass and good,\u201d was the reply:\n    \u201cFor down at Font-dou-R\u00e8i, in Beaucaire,\n    Whither she went to glean, she was so fair\n    And deft at work that all were smitten by her;\n    And there she stays as servant by desire.\u201d\n\n    \u201cAnd you are like her?\u201d--\u201cNow that makes me merry.\n    Why, she is blonde, and I brown as a berry!\n    But wouldst thou know whom she is like, the elf?\n    Why, even like thee, Mir\u00e8io, thine own self!\n    Your two bright heads, with all their wealth of hair\n    Like myrtle-leaves, would make a perfect pair.\n\n    \u201cBut, ah! thou knowest better far to gather\n    The muslin of thy cap than doth the other!\n    My little sister is not plain nor dull,\n    But thou,--thou art so much more beautiful!\u201d\n    \u201cOh, what a Vincen!\u201d cried Mir\u00e8io,\n    And suddenly the half-culled branch let go.\n\n    Sing, magnarello, merrily,\n      As the green leaves you gather!\n    In their third sleep the silk-worms lie,\n      And lovely is the weather.\n    Like brown bees that in open glades\n      From rosemary gather honey,\n    The mulberry-trees swarm full of maids,\n      Glad as the air is sunny!\n\n    \u201cAnd so you fancy I am fair to view,\n    Fairer than Vinceneto?\u201d \u201cThat I do!\u201d\n    \u201cBut what advantage have I more than she?\u201d\n    \u201cMother divine!\u201d he cried, impetuously,\n    \u201cThat of the goldfinch o\u2019er the fragile wren--\n    Grace for the eye--song for the hearts of men\n\n    \u201cWhat more? Ah, my poor sister! Hear me speak,--\n    Thou wilt not get the white out of the leek:\n    Her eyes are like the water of the sea,\n    Blue, clear--thine, black, and they flash gloriously.\n    And, O Mir\u00e8io! when on me they shine,\n    I seem to drain a bumper of cooked wine!\n\n    \u201cMy sister hath a silver voice and mellow,--\n    I love to hear her sing the _Peirounello_,--\n    But, ah! my sweet young lady, every word\n    Thou\u2019st given me my spirit more hath stirred,\n    My ear more thrilled, my very heart-strings wrung,\n    More than a thousand songs divinely sung!\n\n    \u201cWith roaming all the pastures in the sun,\n    My little sister\u2019s face and neck are dun\n    As dates; but thou, most fair one, I think well,\n    Art fashioned like the flowers of Asphodel.\n    So the bold Summer with his tawny hand\n    Dare not caress thy forehead white and bland.\n\n    \u201cMoreover, Vinceneto is more slim\n    Than dragon-flies that o\u2019er the brooklet skim.\n    Poor child! In one year grew she up to this;\n    But verily in thy shape is naught amiss.\u201d\n    Again Mir\u00e8io, turning rosy red,\n    Let fall her branch, and \u201cWhat a Vincen!\u201d said.\n\n    Sing, magnarello, merrily,\n      The green leaves ever piling!\n    Two comely children sit on high,\n      Amid the foliage, smiling.\n    Sing, magnarello, loud and oft:\n      Your merry labour hasten.\n    The guileless pair who laugh aloft\n      Are learning love\u2019s first lesson.\n\n    Cleared from the hills meanwhile the mists of morn,\n    And o\u2019er the ruined towers, whither return\n    Nightly the grim old lords of Baux, they say;\n    And o\u2019er the barren rocks \u2019gan take their way\n    Vultures, whose large, white wings are seen to gleam\n    Resplendent in the noontide\u2019s burning beam.\n\n    Then cried the maiden, pouting, \u201cWe have done\n    Naught! Oh, shame to idle so! _Some one_\n    Said he would help me; and that some one still\n    Doth naught but talk, and make me laugh at will.\n    Work now, lest mother say I am unwary\n    And idle, and too awkward yet to marry!\n\n    \u201cAh! my brave friend, I think should one engage you\n    To pick leaves by the quintal, and for wage, you\n    Would all the same sit still and feast your eyes,\n    Handling the ready sprays in dreamy wise!\u201d\n    Whereat the boy, a trifle disconcerted,\n    \u201cAnd so thou takest me for a gawky!\u201d blurted.\n\n    \u201cWe\u2019ll see, my fair young lady,\u201d added he,\n    \u201cWhich of us two the better picker be!\u201d\n    They ply both hands now. With vast animation,\n    They bend and strip the branches. No occasion\n    For rest or idle chatter either uses\n    (The bleating sheep, they say, her mouthful loses),\n\n    Until the mulberry-tree is bare of leaves,\n    And these the ready sack at once receives,\n    At whose distended mouth--ah, youth is sweet!--\n    Mir\u00e8io\u2019s pretty taper hand will meet\n    In strange entanglement that somehow lingers\n    That Vincen\u2019s, with its brown and burning fingers.\n\n    Both started. In their cheeks the flush rose higher:\n    They felt the heat of some mysterious fire.\n    They dropped the mulberry-leaves as if afraid,\n    And, tremulous with passion, the boy said,--\n    \u201cWhat aileth thee, my lady? answer me!\n    Did any hidden hornet dare sting thee?\u201d\n\n    Well-nigh inaudible, with head bent low,\n    \u201cI know not, Vincen,\u201d--thus Mir\u00e8io.\n    And so they turned a few more leaves to gather,\n    And for a while spake not again, but rather\n    Exchanged bright looks and sidelong, saying well\n    The one who first should laugh, would break the spell.\n\n    Their hearts beat high, the green leaves fell like rain;\n    And, when the time for sacking came again,\n    Whether by chance or by contrivance, yet\n    The white hand and the brown hand always met.\n    Nor seemed there any lack of happiness\n    The while their labour failed not to progress.\n\n    Sing, magnarello, merrily,\n      As the green leaves you gather!\n    The sun of May is riding high,\n      And ardent is the weather.\n\n    Now suddenly Mir\u00e8io whispered, \u201cHark!\n    What can that be?\u201d and listened like a lark\n    Upon a vine, her small forefinger pressing\n    Against her lip, and eager eyes addressing\n    To a bird\u2019s nest upon a leafy bough,\n    Just opposite the one where she was now.\n\n    \u201cAh! wait a little while!\u201d with bated breath,\n    So the young basket-weaver answereth,\n    And like a sparrow hopped from limb to limb\n    Toward the nest. Down in the tree-trunk dim,\n    Close peering through a crevice in the wood,\n    Full-fledged and lively saw he the young brood.\n\n    And, sitting firmly the rough bough astride,\n    Clung with one hand, and let the other glide\n    Into the hollow trunk. Above his head\n    Mir\u00e8io leaned with her cheeks rosy red.\n    \u201cWhat sort?\u201d she whispered from her covert shady.\n    \u201cBeauties!\u201d--\u201cBut what?\u201d--\u201cBlue tomtits, my young lady!\u201d\n\n    Then laughed the maiden, and her laugh was gay:\n    \u201cSee, Vincen! Have you never heard them say\n    That when two find a nest in company,\n    On mulberry, or any other tree,\n    The Church within a year will join those two?\n    And proverbs, father says, are always true.\u201d\n\n    \u201cYea,\u201d quoth the lad; \u201cbut do not thou forget\n    That this, our happy hope, may perish yet,\n    If all the birdies be not caged forthwith.\u201d\n    \u201cJesu divine!\u201d the maiden murmureth:\n    \u201cPut them by quickly! It concerns us much\n    Our birdies should be safe from alien touch.\u201d\n\n    \u201cWhy, then, the very safest place,\u201d said he,\n    \u201cMethinks, Mir\u00e8io, would thy bodice be!\u201d\n    \u201cOh, surely!\u201d So the lad explores the hollow,\n    His hand withdrawing full of tomtits callow.\n    Four were they; and the maid in ecstacy\n    Cries \u201cMon Dieu!\u201d and lifts her hands on high.\n\n    \u201cHow many! What a pretty brood it is!\n    There! There, poor darlings, give me just one kiss!\u201d\n    And, lavishing a thousand fond caresses,\n    Tenderly, carefully, the four she presses\n    Inside her waist, obeying Vincen\u2019s will;\n    While he, \u201cHold out thy hands! there are more still!\u201d\n\n    \u201cOh sweet! The little eyes in each blue head\n    Are sharp as needles,\u201d as Mir\u00e8io said\n    Softly, three more of the wee brood she pressed\n    Into their smooth, white prison with the rest,\n    Who, when bestowed within that refuge warm,\n    Thought they were in their nest and safe from harm.\n\n    \u201cAre there more, Vincen?\u201d--\u201cAy!\u201d he answered her.\n    \u201cThen, Holy Virgin! you\u2019re a sorcerer!\u201d\n    \u201cThou simple maid! About St. George\u2019s day,\n    Ten, twelve, and fourteen eggs, these tomtits lay.\n    Ay, often. Now let these the others follow!\n    They are the last: so good-bye, pretty hollow!\u201d\n\n    But ere the words were spoken, and the maid\n    In her flowered neckerchief had fairly laid\n    Her little charge, she gave a piercing wail:\n    \u201cOh me! oh me!\u201d then murmured, and turned pale;\n    And, laying both her hands upon her breast,\n    Moaned, \u201cI am dying!\u201d and was sore distressed,\n\n    And could but weep: \u201cAh, they are scratching me!\n    They sting! Come quickly, Vincent, up the tree!\u201d\n    For on the last arrival had ensued\n    Wondrous commotion in the hidden brood;\n    The fledglings latest taken from the nest\n    Had sore disorder wrought among the rest.\n\n    Because within so very small a valley\n    All could not lie at ease, so must they gayly\n    Scramble with claw and wing down either slope,\n    And up the gentle hills, thus to find scope:\n    A thousand tiny somersets they turn,\n    A thousand pretty rolls they seem to learn.\n\n    And \u201cAh, come quick!\u201d is still the maiden\u2019s cry,\n    Trembling like vine-spray when the wind is high,\n    Or like a heifer stung with cattle-flies.\n    And, as she bends and writhes in piteous wise,\n    Leaps Vincen upward till he plants his feet\n    Once more beside her on her airy seat.\n\n    Sing, magnarello, heap your leaves,\n      While sunny is the weather!\n    He comes to aid her when she grieves:\n      The two are now together.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Thou likest not this tickling?\u201d kindly said he.\n    \u201cWhat if thou wert like me, my gentle lady,\n    And hadst to wander barefoot through the nettles?\u201d\n    So proffering his red sea-cap, there he settles\n    Fast as she draws them from her neckerchief\n    The birdies, to Mir\u00e8io\u2019s vast relief.\n\n    Yet ah, poor dear, the downcast eyes of her!\n    She dares not look at her deliverer\n    For a brief space. But soon a smile ensues,\n    And the tears vanish, as the morning dews\n    That drench the flowers and grass at break of day\n    Roll into little pearls and pass away.\n\n    And then there came a fresh catastrophe:\n    The branch whereon they sat ensconced in glee\n    Snapped, broke asunder, and with ringing shriek\n    Mir\u00e8io flung her arms round Vincen\u2019s neck,\n    And he clasped hers, and they whirled suddenly\n    Down through the leaves upon the supple rye.\n\n    Listen, wind of the Greek, wind of the sea,\n    And shake no more the verdant canopy!\n    Hush for one moment, O thou childish breeze!\n    Breathe soft and whisper low, beholding these!\n    Give them a little time to dream of bliss,--\n    To dream at least, in such a world as this!\n\n    Thou too, swift streamlet of the prattling voice,\n    Peace, prithee! In this hour, make little noise\n    Among the vocal pebbles of thy bed!\n    Ay, little noise! Because two souls have sped\n    To one bright region. Leave them there, to roam\n    Over the starry heights,--their proper home!\n\n    A moment, and she struggled to be free\n    From his embrace. The flower of the quince-tree\n    Is not so pale. Then backward the two sank,\n    And gazed at one another on the bank,\n    Until the weaver\u2019s son the silence brake,\n    And thus in seeming wrath arose and spake:\n\n    \u201cShame on thee, thou perfidious mulberry!\n    A devil\u2019s tree! A Friday-planted tree!\n    Blight seize and wood-louse eat thee! May thy master\n    Hold thee in horror for this day\u2019s disaster!\n    Tell me thou art not hurt, Mir\u00e8io!\u201d\n    Trembling from head to foot, she answered, \u201cNo:\n\n    \u201cI am not hurt; but as a baby weeps\n    And knows not why,--there\u2019s something here that keeps\n    Perpetual tumult in my heart. A pain\n    Blinds me and deafens me, and fills my brain,\n    So that my blood in a tumultuous riot\n    Courses my body through, and won\u2019t be quiet.\u201d\n\n    \u201cMay it not be,\u201d the simple boy replied,\n    \u201cThou fearest to have thy mother come and chide\n    Thy tardy picking,--as when I come back\n    Late from the blackberry-field with face all black,\n    And tattered clothes?\u201d Mir\u00e8io sighed again,\n    \u201cAh, no! This is another kind of pain!\u201d\n\n    \u201cOr possibly a sun-stroke may have lighted\n    Upon thee!\u201d And the eager Vincen cited\n    An ancient crone among the hills of Baux,\n    Taven by name, \u201cwho on the forehead,--so,--\n    A glass of water sets: the ray malign\n    The dazed brain for the crystal will resign.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNay, nay!\u201d impetuously the maiden cried,\n    \u201cFloods of May sunshine never terrified\n    The girls of Crau. Why should I hold you waiting?\n    Vincen, in vain my heart is palpitating!\n    My secret cannot bide a home so small:\n    I love you, Vincen, love you!--That is all!\u201d\n\n    The river-banks, the close-pruned willows hoary,\n    Green grass and ambient air, hearing this story,\n    Were full of glee. But the poor basket-weaver,\n    \u201cPrincess, that thou who art so fair and clever,\n    Shouldst have a tongue given to wicked lying!\n    Why, it confounds me! It is stupefying!\n\n    \u201cWhat! thou in love with me? Mir\u00e8io,\n    My poor life is yet happy. Do not go\n    And make a jest thereof! I might believe\n    Just for one moment, and thereafter grieve\n    My soul to death. Ah, no! my pretty maid,\n    Laugh no more at me in this wise!\u201d he said.\n\n    \u201cNow may God shut me out of Paradise,\n    Vincen, if I have ever told you lies!\n    Go to! I love you! Will that kill you, friend?\n    But if you _will_ be cruel, and so send\n    Me from your side, \u2019tis I who will fall ill,\n    And at your feet lie low till sorrow kill!\u201d\n\n    \u201cNo more! no more!\u201d cried Vincen, desperately:\n    \u201cThere is a gulf \u2019twixt thee and me! The stately\n    Queen of the Lotus Farm art thou, and all\n    Bow at thy coming, hasten to thy call,\n    While I, a vagrant weaver, only wander,\n    Plying my trade from Valabr\u00e8go yonder.\u201d\n\n    \u201cWhat care I?\u201d cried the fiery girl at once.\n    Sharp as a sheaf-binder\u2019s came her response.\n    \u201cMay not my lover, then, a baron be,\n    Or eke a weaver, if he pleases me?\n    But if you will not have me pine away,\n    Why look so handsome, even in rags, I say?\u201d\n\n    He turned and faced her. Ah, she was enchanting!\n    And as a charm\u00e8d bird falls dizzy, panting,\n    So he. \u201cMir\u00e8io, thou\u2019rt a sorceress!\n    And I bedazzled by thy loveliness.\n    Thy voice, too, mounts into this head of mine,\n    And makes me like a man o\u2019ercome with wine.\n\n    \u201cWhy, can it be, Mir\u00e8io? Seest thou not\n    Even now with thy embrace my brain is hot.\n    I am a pack-bearer, and well may be\n    A laughing-stock for evermore to thee,\n    But thou shalt have the truth, dear, in this hour:\n    I love thee, with a love that could devour!\n\n    \u201cWert thou to ask,--lo, love I thee so much!--\n    The golden goat, that ne\u2019er felt mortal touch\n    Upon its udders, but doth only lick\n    Moss from the base of the precipitous peak\n    Of Baux,--I\u2019d perish in the quarries there,\n    Or bring thee down the goat with golden hair!\n\n    \u201cSo much, that, if thou saidst, \u2018I want a star,\u2019\n    There is no stream so wild, no sea so far,\n    But I would cross; no headsman, steel or fire,\n    That could withhold me. Yea, I would climb higher\n    Than peaks that kiss the sky, that star to wrest;\n    And Sunday thou shouldst wear it on thy breast!\n\n    \u201cO my Mir\u00e8io! Ever as I gaze,\n    Thy beauty fills me with a deep amaze.\n    Once, when by Vaucluse grotto I was going,\n    I saw a fig-tree in the bare rock growing;\n    So very spare it was, the lizards gray\n    Had found more shade beneath a jasmine spray.\n\n    \u201cBut, round about the roots, once every year\n    The neighbouring stream comes gushing, as I hear,\n    And the shrub drinks the water as it rises,\n    And that one drink for the whole year suffices.\n    Even as the gem is cut to fit the ring,\n    This parable to us is answering.\n\n    \u201cI am the fig-tree on the barren mountain;\n    And thou, mine own, art the reviving fountain!\n    Surely it would suffice me, could I feel\n    That, once a year, I might before thee kneel,\n    And sun myself in thy sweet face, and lay\n    My lips unto thy fingers, as to-day!\u201d\n\n    Trembling with love, Mir\u00e8io hears him out,\n    And lets him wind his arms her neck about\n    And clasp her as bewildered. Suddenly,\n    Through the green walk, quavers an old wife\u2019s cry:\n    \u201cHow now, Mir\u00e8io? Are you coming soon?\n    What will the silk-worms have to eat at noon?\u201d\n\n    As ofttimes, at the coming on of night,\n    A flock of sparrows on a pine alight\n    And fill the air with joyous chirruping,\n    Yet, if a passing gleaner pause and fling\n    A stone that way, they to the neighbouring wood,\n    By terror winged, their instant flight make good;\n\n    So, with a tumult of emotion thrilled,\n    Fled the enamoured two across the field.\n    But when, her leaves upon her head, the maid\n    Turned silently toward the farm, he stayed,--\n    Vincen,--and breathless watched her in her flight\n    Over the fallow, till she passed from sight.\n\n\n\n\nCANTO III.\n\n_The Cocooning._\n\n\n    When the crop is fair in the olive-yard,\n      And the earthen jars are ready\n    For the golden oil from the barrels poured,\n      And the big cart rocks unsteady\n    With its tower of gathered sheaves, and strains\n    And groans on its way through fields and lanes;\n\n    When brawny and bare as an old athlete\n      Comes Bacchus the dance a-leading,\n    And the labourers all, with juice-dyed feet,\n      The vintage of Crau are treading,\n    And the good wine pours from the brimful presses,\n    And the ruddy foam in the vats increases;\n\n    When under the leaves of the Spanish broom\n      The clear silk-worms are holden,\n    An artist each, in a tiny loom,\n      Weaving a web all golden,--\n    Fine, frail cells out of sunlight spun,\n    Where they creep and sleep by the million,--\n\n    Glad is Provence on a day like that,\n      \u2019Tis the time of jest and laughter:\n    The Ferigoulet and the Baume Muscat\n      They quaff, and they sing thereafter.\n    And lads and lasses, their toils between,\n    Dance to the tinkling tambourine.\n\n    \u201cMethinks, good neighbours, I am Fortune\u2019s pet.\n    Ne\u2019er in my trellised arbor saw I yet\n    A silkier bower, cocoons more worthy praise,\n    Or richer harvest, since the year of grace\n    When first I laid my hand on Ramoun\u2019s arm\n    And came, a youthful bride, to Lotus Farm.\u201d\n\n    So spake Jano Mario, Ramoun\u2019s wife,\n    The fond, proud mother who had given life\n    To our Mir\u00e8io. Unto her had hied,\n    The while were gathered the cocoons outside,\n    Her neighbours. In the silk-worm-room they throng;\n    And, as they aid the picking, gossip long.\n\n    To these Mir\u00e8io tendered now and then\n    Oak-sprigs and sprays of rosemary; for when\n    The worms, lured by the mountain odour, come\n    In myriads, there to make their silken home,\n    The sprays and sprigs, adorn\u00e8d in such wise,\n    Are like the golden palms of Paradise.\n\n    \u201cOn Mother Mary\u2019s altar yesterday,\u201d\n    Jano Mario said, \u201cI went to lay\n    My finer sprays, by way of tithe. And so\n    I do each year; for you, my women, know\n    That, when the holy Mother will, \u2019tis she\n    Who sendeth up the worms abundantly.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNow, for my part,\u201d said Z\u00e8u of Host Farm,\n    \u201cGreat fears have I my worms will come to harm.\n    You mind that ugly day the east wind blew,--\n    I left my window open,--if you knew\n    Ever such folly!--and to my affright\n    Upon my floor are twenty, now turned white.\u201d\n\n    To Z\u00e8u thus the crone Taven replied--\n    A witch, who from the cliffs of Baux had hied\n    To help at the cocooning: \u201cYouth is bold,\n    The young think they know better than the old;\n    And age is torment, and we mourn the fate\n    Which bids us see and know,--but all too late,\n\n    \u201cYe are such giddy women, every one,\n    That, if the hatching promise well, ye run\n    Straightway about the streets the tale to tell.\n    \u2018Come see my silk-worms! \u2019Tis incredible\n    How fine they are!\u2019 Envy can well dissemble:\n    She hastens to your room, her heart a-tremble\n\n    \u201cWith wrath. And \u2018Well done, neighbour!\u2019 she says cheerly:\n    \u2018This does one good! You\u2019ve still your caul on, clearly!\u2019\n    But when your head is turned, she casts upon \u2019em--\n    The envious one--a look so full of venom,\n    It knots and burns \u2019em up. And then you say\n    It was the east wind plastered \u2019em that way!\u201d\n\n    \u201cI don\u2019t say that has naught to do with it,\u201d\n    Quoth Z\u00e8u. \u201cStill it had been quite as fit\n    For me to close the window.\u201d--\u201cDoubt you, then,\n    The harm the eye can do,\u201d went on Taven,\n    \u201cWhen in the head it glistens balefully?\u201d\n    And Z\u00e8u scanned, herself with piercing eye.\n\n    \u201cYe are such fools, ye seem to think,\u201d she said,\n    \u201cThat scraping with a scalpel on the dead\n    Would win its honey-secret from the bee!\n    But may not a fierce look, now answer me,\n    The unborn babe for evermore deform,\n    And dry the cow\u2019s milk in her udders warm?\n\n    \u201cAn owl may fascinate a little bird;\n    A serpent, flying geese, as I have heard,\n    How high soe\u2019er they mount. And if one keep\n    A fixed gaze upon silk-worms, will they sleep?\n    Moreover, is there, neighbours, in the land\n    So wise a virgin that she can withstand\n\n    \u201cThe fiery eyes of passionate youth?\u201d Here stopped\n    The hag, and damsels four their cocoons dropped;\n    \u201cIn June as in October,\u201d murmuring,\n    \u201cHer tongue hath evermore a barb\u00e8d sting,\n    The ancient viper! What the lads, say you?\n    Let them come, then! We\u2019ll see what they can do?\u201d\n\n    But other merry ones retorted, \u201cNo!\n    We want them not! Do we, Mir\u00e8io?\u201d\n    \u201cNot we! Nor is it always cocooning,\n    So I\u2019ll a bottle from the cellar bring\n    That you will find delicious.\u201d And she fled\n    Toward the house because her cheeks grew red.\n\n    \u201cNow, friends,\u201d said haughty Lauro, with decision,\n    \u201cThis is my mind, though poor be my condition:\n    I\u2019ll smile on no one, even though my lover\n    As king of fairy-land his realm should offer.\n    A pleasure were it, could I see him lying,\n    And seven long years before my footstool sighing.\u201d\n\n    \u201cAh!\u201d said Clemen\u00e7o, \u201cshould a king me woo,\n    And say he loved me, without much ado\n    I\u2019d grant the royal suit! And chiefly thus\n    Were he a young king and a glorious.\n    A king of men, in beauty, I\u2019d let come\n    And freely lead me to his palace home!\n\n    \u201cBut see! If I were once enthron\u00e8d there,\n    A sovereign and an empress, in a fair\n    Mantle bedecked, of golden-flowered brocade,\n    With pearls and emeralds dazzling round my head,\n    Then would my heart for my poor country yearn;\n    And I, the queen, would unto Baux return.\n\n    \u201cAnd I would make my capital at Baux,\n    And on the rock where lie its ruins low\n    I would rebuild our ancient castle, and\n    A white tower on the top thereof should stand\n    Whose head should touch the stars. Thither retiring,\n    If rest or solace were the queen desiring,\n\n    \u201cWe\u2019d climb the turret-stair, my prince and I,\n    And gladly throw the crown and mantle by.\n    And would it not be blissful with my love,\n    Aloft, alone to sit, the world above?\n    Or, leaned upon the parapet by his side,\n    To search the lovely landscape far and wide,\n\n    \u201cOur own glad kingdom of Provence descrying,\n    Like some great orange-grove beneath us lying\n    All fair? And, ever stretching dreamily\n    Beyond the hills and plains, the sapphire sea;\n    While noble ships, tricked out with streamers gay,\n    Just graze the Chateau d\u2019If, and pass away?\n\n    \u201cOr we would turn to lightning-scathed Ventour,\n    Who, while the lesser heights before him cower,\n    His hoary head against the heaven raises,\n    As I have seen, in solitary places\n    Of beech and pine, with staff in ag\u00e8d hand,\n    Some shepherd-chief, his flock o\u2019erlooking, stand.\n\n    \u201cAgain, we\u2019d follow the great Rhone awhile,\n    Adown whose banks the cities brave defile,\n    And dip their lips and drink, with dance and song.\n    Stately is the Rhone\u2019s march, and very strong;\n    But even he must bend at Avignon\n    His haughty head to Notre Dame des Doms.\n\n    \u201cOr watch the ever-varying Durance,\n    Now like some fierce and ravenous goat advance\n    Devouring banks and bridges; now demure\n    As maid from rustic well who bears her ewer,\n    Spilling her scanty water as she dallies,\n    And every youth along her pathway rallies.\u2019\n\n    So spake her sweet Proven\u00e7al majesty,\n    And rose with brimful apron, and put by\n    Her gathered treasure. Two more maids were there,\n    Twin sisters, the one dark, the other fair,--\n    Azal\u00e4is, Vi\u00f2ulano. The stronghold\n    Of Estoublon sheltered their parents old.\n\n    And oft these two to Lotus Farmstead came;\n    While that mischievous lad, Cupid by name,\n    Who loves to sport with generous hearts and tender,\n    Had made the sisters both their love surrender\n    To the same youth. So Azal\u00e4is said,--\n    The dark one,--lifting up her raven head:\n\n    \u201cNow, damsels, play awhile that I were queen.\n    The Marseilles ships, the Beaucaire meadows green.\n    Smiling La Ciotat, and fair Salon,\n    With all her almond trees, to me belong.\n    Then the young maids I\u2019d summon by decree,\n    From Arles, Baux, Barbentano, unto me.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Come, fly like birds!\u2019 the order should be given;\n    And I, of these, would choose the fairest seven,\n    And royal charge upon the same would lay,\n    The false love and the true in scales to weigh.\n    And then would merry counsel holden be;\n    For sure it is a great calamity\n\n    \u201cThat half of those who love, with love most meet,\n    Can never marry, and their joy complete.\n    But when I, Azal\u00e4is, hold the helm,\n    I proclamation make, that in my realm\n    True lovers wounded in their cruel sport\n    Shall aye find mercy at the maiden\u2019s court.\n\n    \u201cAnd if one sell her robe of honour white,\n    Whether it be for gold or jewel bright,\n    And if one offer insult, or betray\n    A fond heart, unto such as these alway\n    The high court of the seven maids shall prove\n    The stern avenger of offended love.\n\n    \u201cAnd if two lovers the same maid desire,\n    Or if two maids to the same lad aspire,\n    My council\u2019s duty it shall be to choose\n    Which loves the better, which the better sues,\n    And which is worthier of a happy fate.\n    Moreover, on my maidens there shall wait\n\n    \u201cSeven sweet poets, who from time to time\n    Shall write the laws of love in lovely rhyme\n    Upon wild vine-leaves or the bark of trees;\n    And sometimes, in a stately chorus, these\n    Will sing the same, and then their couplets all\n    Like honey from the honey-comb will fall.\u201d\n\n    So, long ago, the whispering pines among,\n    Faneto de Gaut\u00e8ume may have sung,\n    When she the glory of her star-crowned head\n    On Roumanin and on the Alpines shed;\n    Or Countess Dio, of the passionate lays,\n    Who held her courts of love in the old days.\n\n    But now Mir\u00e8io, to the room returning,\n    With face as radiant as an Easter morning,\n    A flagon bore; and, for their spirits\u2019 sake,\n    Besought them all her beverage to partake:\n    \u201cFor this will make us work with heartier will;\n    So come, good women, and your goblets fill!\u201d\n\n    Then, pouring from the wicker-covered flask\n    A generous drink for whosoe\u2019er might ask,\n    (A string of gold the falling liquor made),\n    \u201cI mixed this cordial mine own self,\u201d she said:\n    \u201cOne leaves it in a window forty days,\n    That it may mellow in the sun\u2019s hot rays.\n\n    \u201cHerein are mountain herbs, in number three.\n    The liquor keeps their odour perfectly:\n    It strengthens one.\u201d Here brake in other voices:\n    \u201cListen, Mir\u00e8io! Tell us what your choice is;\n    For these have told what they would do, if they\n    Were queens, or came to great estate one day.\n\n    \u201cIn such a case, Mir\u00e8io, what would you?\u201d\n    \u201cWho, I? How can I tell what I would do?\n    I am so happy in our own La Crau\n    With my dear parents, wherefore should I go?\u201d\n    \u201cAh, ha!\u201d outspake another maiden bold:\n    \u201cLittle care you for silver or for gold.\n\n    \u201cBut on a certain morn, I mind it well,--\n    Forgive me, dear, that I the tale should tell!--\n    \u2019Twas Tuesday: I had gathered sticks that day,\n    And, fagot on my hip, had won my way\n    Almost to La Crous-Blanco, when I \u2019spied\n    You in a tree, with some one by your side\n\n    \u201cWho chatted gayly. A lithe form he had\u201d--\n    \u201cWhence did he come?\u201d they cried. \u201cWho was the lad?\u201d\n    Said Noro, \u201cTo tell that were not so easy,\n    Because among the thick-leaved mulberry-trees he\n    Was hidden half; yet think I \u2019twas the clever\n    Vincen, the Valabregan basket-weaver!\u201d\n\n    \u201cOh!\u201d cried the damsels all, with peals of laughter,\n    \u201cSee you not what the little cheat was after?\n    A pretty basket she would fain receive,\n    And made this poor boy in her love believe!\n    The fairest maiden the whole country over\n    Has chosen the barefoot Vincen for her lover!\u201d\n\n    So mocked they, till o\u2019er each young countenance\n    In turn there fell a dark and sidelong glance,--\n    Taven\u2019s,--who cried, \u201cA thousand curses fall\n    Upon you, and the vampire seize you all!\n    If the good Lord from heaven this way came,\n    You girls, I think, would giggle all the same.\n\n    \u201c\u2019Tis brave to laugh at this poor lad of osiers;\n    But mark! the future may make strange disclosures,\n    Poor though he be. Now hear the oracle!\n    God in his house once wrought a miracle;\n    And I can show the truth of what I say,\n    For, lasses, it all happened in my day.\n\n    \u201cOnce, in the wild woods of the Luberon,\n    A shepherd kept his flock. His days were long;\n    But when at last the same were well-nigh spent,\n    And toward the grave his iron frame was bent,\n    He sought the hermit of Saint Ouqu\u00e8ri,\n    To make his last confession piously.\n\n    \u201cAlone, in the Vaumasco valley lost,\n    His foot had never sacred threshold crost,\n    Since he partook his first communion.\n    Even his prayers were from his memory gone;\n    But now he rose and left his cottage lowly,\n    And came and bowed before the hermit holy.\n\n    \u201c\u2018With what sin chargest thou thyself, my brother?\u2019\n    The solitary said. Replied the other,\n    The aged man, \u2018Once, long ago, I slew\n    A little bird about my flock that flew,--\n    A cruel stone I flung its life to end:\n    It was a wagtail, and the shepherds\u2019 friend.\u2019\n\n    \u201c\u2018Is this a simple soul,\u2019 the hermit thought,\n    \u2018Or is it an impostor?\u2019 And he sought\n    Right curiously to read the old man\u2019s face\n    Until, to solve the riddle, \u2018Go,\u2019 he says,\n    \u2018And hang thy shepherd\u2019s cloak yon beam upon,\n    And afterward I will absolve my son.\u2019\n\n    \u201cA single sunbeam through the chapel strayed;\n    And there it was the priest the suppliant bade\n    To hang his cloak! But the good soul arose,\n    And drew it off with mien of all repose,\n    And threw it upward. And it hung in sight\n    Suspended on the slender shaft of light!\n\n    \u201cThen fell the hermit prostrate on the floor,\n    \u2018Oh, man of God!\u2019 he cried, and he wept sore,\n    \u2018Let but the blessed hand these tears bedew,\n    Fulfil the sacred office for us two!\n    No sins of thine can I absolve, \u2019tis clear:\n    Thou art the saint, and I the sinner here!\u2019\u201d\n\n    Her story ended, the crone said no more;\n    But all the laughter of the maids was o\u2019er.\n    Only Laureto dared one little joke:\n    \u201cThis tells us ne\u2019er to laugh at any cloak!\n    Good may the beast be, although rough the hide;\n    But, girls, methought young mistress I espied\n\n    \u201cGrow crimson as an autumn grape, because\n    Vincen\u2019s dear name so lightly uttered was.\n    There\u2019s mystery here! Mir\u00e8io, we are jealous!\n    Lasted the picking long that day? Pray, tell us!\n    When two friends meet, the hour is winged with pleasure;\n    And, for a lover, one has always leisure!\u201d\n\n    \u201cOh, fie!\u201d Mir\u00e8io said. \u201cEnough of joking!\n    Mind your work now, and be not so provoking!\n    You would make swear the very saints! But I\n    Promise you one and all, most faithfully,\n    I\u2019ll seek a convent while my years are tender,\n    Sooner than e\u2019er my maiden heart surrender!\u201d\n\n    Then brake the damsels into merry chorus:\n    \u201cHave we not pretty Magali before us?\n    Who love and lovers held in such disdain\n    That, to escape their torment, she was fain\n    To Saint Blasi\u2019s in Arles away to hie,\n    And bury her sweet self from every eye.\u201d\n\n    \u201cCome, Noro, you, whose voice is ever thrilling,\n    Who charm us all, sing now, if you are willing,\n    The song of Magali, the cunning fairy,\n    Who love had shunned by all devices airy.\n    A bird, a vine, a sunbeam she became,\n    Yet fell herself, love\u2019s victim all the same!\n\n    \u201cQueen of my soul!\u201d sang Noro, and the rest\n    Fell straightway to their work with twofold zest;\n    And as, when one cicala doth begin\n    Its high midsummer note, the rest fall in\n    And swell the chorus, so the damsels here\n    Sang the refrain with voices loud and clear:--\n\n\nI.\n\n    \u201cMagali, queen of my soul,\n      The dawn is near!\n    Hark to my tambourine,\n    Hide not thy bower within,\n      Open and hear!\n\n\nII.\n\n    \u201cThe sky is full of stars,\n      And the wind soft;\n    But, when thine eyes they see,\n    The stars, O Magali,\n      Will pale aloft!\u201d\n\n\nIII.\n\n    \u201cIdle as summer breeze\n      The tune thou playest!\n    I\u2019ll vanish in the sea,\n    A silver eel will be,\n      Ere thou me stayest.\u201d\n\n\nIV.\n\n    \u201cIf thou become an eel,\n      And so forsake me,\n    I will turn fisher too\n    And fish the water blue\n      Until I take thee!\u201d\n\n\nV.\n\n    \u201cIn vain with net or line\n      Thou me implorest:\n    I\u2019ll be a bird that day,\n    And wing my trackless way\n      Into the forest!\u201d\n\n\nVI.\n\n    \u201cIf thou become a bird,\n      And so dost dare me,\n    I will a fowler be,\n    And follow cunningly\n      Until I snare thee!\u201d\n\n\nVII.\n\n    \u201cWhen thou thy cruel snare\n      Settest full surely,\n    I will a flower become,\n    And in my prairie home\n      Hide me securely!\u201d\n\n\nVIII.\n\n    \u201cIf thou become a flower,\n      Before thou thinkest\n    I\u2019ll be a streamlet clear,\n    And all the water bear\n      That thou, love, drinkest!\u201d\n\n\nIX.\n\n    \u201cWhen thou, a stream, dost feed\n      The flower yonder,\n    I will turn cloud straightway,\n    And to America\n      Away I\u2019ll wander.\u201d\n\n\nX.\n\n    \u201cThough thou to India\n      Fly from thy lover,\n    Still I will follow thee:\n    I the sea-breeze will be\n      To waft thee over!\u201d\n\n\nXI.\n\n    \u201cI can outstrip the breeze\n      Fast as it flieth:\n    I\u2019ll be the swift sun-ray\n    That melts the ice away\n      And the grass drieth!\u201d\n\n\nXII.\n\n    \u201cSunlight if thou become,\n      Are my wiles ended?\n    I\u2019ll be a lizard green,\n    And quaff the golden sheen\n      To make me splendid!\u201d\n\n\nXIII.\n\n    \u201cBe thou a Triton, hid\n      In the dark sedges!\n    I\u2019m the moon by whose ray\n    Fairies and witches pay\n      Their mystic pledges!\u201d\n\n\nXIV.\n\n    \u201cIf thou the moon wilt be\n      Sailing in glory,\n    I\u2019ll be the halo white\n    Hovering every night\n      Around and o\u2019er thee!\u201d\n\n\nXV.\n\n    \u201cYet shall thy shadowy arm\n      Embrace me never!\n    I will turn virgin rose,\n    And all my thorns oppose\n      To thee for ever!\u201d\n\n\nXVI.\n\n    \u201cIf thou become a rose,\n      Vain too shall this be!\n    Seest thou not that I,\n    As a bright butterfly,\n      Freely may kiss thee?\u201d\n\n\nXVII.\n\n    \u201cUrge, then, thy mad pursuit:\n      Idly thou\u2019lt follow!\n    I\u2019ll in the deep wood bide;\n    I\u2019ll in the old oak hide,\n      Gnarl\u00e8d and hollow.\u201d\n\n\nXVIII.\n\n    \u201cIn the dim forest glade\n      Wilt thou be hidden?\n    I\u2019ll be the ivy-vine,\n    And my long arms entwine\n      Round thee unbidden!\u201d\n\n\nXIX.\n\n    \u201cFold thine arms tightly, then:\n      Clasp the oak only!\n    I\u2019ll a white sister be!\n    Far off in St. Blasi,\n      Secure and lonely!\u201d\n\n\nXX.\n\n    \u201cBe thou a white-veiled nun\n      Come to confession,\n    I will be there as priest,\n    Thee freely to divest\n      Of all transgression!\u201d\n\n    The startled women their cocoons let fall.\n    \u201cNoro, make haste!\u201d outspake they one and all:\n    \u201cWhat could our hunted Magali answer then?\n    A nun, poor dear, who had already been\n    A cloud, a bird, a fish, an oak, a flower,\n    The sun, the moon, the stream, in one short hour?\u201d\n\n    \u201cAh, yes!\u201d said Noro, \u201cI the rest will sing:\n    She was, I think, the cloister entering;\n    And that mad fowler dared to promise her\n    He would in the confessional appear,\n    And shrive her. Therefore hear what she replies:\n    The maid hath yet another last device:\u201d--\n\n\nXXI.\n\n    \u201cEnter the sacred house!\n      I shall be sleeping,\n    Robed in a winding-sheet,\n    Nuns at my head and feet,\n      Above me weeping.\u201d\n\n\nXXII.\n\n    \u201cIf thou wert lifeless dust,\n      My toils were o\u2019er:\n    I\u2019d be the yawning grave,\n    Thee in my arms to have\n      For evermore!\u201d\n\n\nXXIII.\n\n    \u201cNow know I thou art true,\n      Leave me not yet!\n    Come, singer fair, and take,\n    And wear it for my sake,\n      This annulet!\u201d\n\n\nXXIV.\n\n    \u201cLook up, my blessed one,\n      The heaven scan!\n    Since the stars came to see\n    Thee, O my Magali,\n      They are turned wan!\u201d\n\n    A silence fell, the sweet song being ended:\n    Only with the last moving notes had blended\n    The voices of the rest. Their heads were drooping,\n    As they before the melody were stooping,\n    Like slender reeds that lean and sway for ever\n    Before the flowing eddies of a river.\n\n    Till Noro said, \u201cNow is the air serene;\n    And here the mowers come, their scythes to clean\n    Beside the vivary brook. Mir\u00e8io, dear,\n    Bring us a few St. John\u2019s Day apples here.\n    And we will add a little new-made cheese,\n    And take our lunch beneath the lotus-trees.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCANTO IV.\n\n_The Suitors._\n\n\n      When violets are blue in the blue shadows\n          Of the o\u2019erhanging trees,\n      The youth who stray in pairs about the meadows\n          Are glad to gather these.\n\n      When peace descends upon the troubled Ocean,\n          And he his wrath forgets,\n      Flock from Martigue the boats with wing-like motion,\n          The fishes fill their nets.\n\n      And when the girls of Crau bloom into beauty\n          (And fairer earth knows not),\n      Aye are there suitors ready for their duty\n          In castle and in cot.\n\n    Thus to Mir\u00e8io\u2019s home came seeking her\n    A trio notable,--a horse-tamer,\n    A herdsman, and a shepherd. It befell\n    The last was first who came his tale to tell.\n    Alari was his name, a wealthy man--\n    He had a thousand sheep, the story ran.\n\n    The same were wont to feed the winter long\n    In rich salt-pastures by Lake Entressen.\n    And at wheat-boiling time, in burning May,\n    Himself would often lead his flock, they say,\n    Up through the hills to pastures green and high:\n    They say moreover, and full faith have I,\n    That ever as St. Mark\u2019s came round again\n    Nine noted shearers Alari would retain\n    Three days to shear his flock. Added to these\n    A man to bear away each heavy fleece,\n    And a sheep-boy who back and forward ran\n    And filled the shearer\u2019s quickly emptied can.\n\n    But when the summer heats began to fail\n    And the high peaks to feel the snowy gale,\n    A stately sight it was that flock to see\n    Wind from the upper vales of Dauphiny,\n    And o\u2019er the Crau pursue their devious ways,\n    Upon the toothsome winter grass to graze.\n\n    Also to watch them there where they defile\n    Into the stony road were well worth while;\n    The early lambkins all the rest outstripping\n    And merrily about the lamb-herd leaping,\n    The bell-decked asses with their foals beside,\n    Or following after them. These had for guide\n\n    A drover, who a patient mule bestrode.\n    Its wattled panniers bare a motley load:\n    Food for the shepherd-folk, and flasks of wine,\n    And the still bleeding hides of slaughtered kine;\n    And folded garments whereon oft there lay\n    Some weakly lamb, a-weary of the way.\n\n    Next came abreast--the captains of the host--\n    Five fiery bucks, their fearsome heads uptost:\n    With bells loud jingling and with sidelong glances,\n    And backward curving horns, each one advances.\n    The sober mothers follow close behind,\n    Striving their lawless little kids to mind.\n\n    A rude troop and a ravenous they are,\n    And these the goat-herd hath in anxious care.\n    And after them there follow presently\n    The great ram-chiefs, with muzzles lifted high:\n    You know them by the heavy horn that lies\n    Thrice curved about the ear in curious wise.\n\n    Their ribs and backs with tufts of wool are decked,\n    That they may have their meed of due respect\n    As the flock\u2019s grandsires. Plain to all beholders,\n    With sheepskin cloak folded about his shoulders,\n    Strides the chief-shepherd next, with lordly swing;\n    The main corps of his army following.\n\n    Tumbling through clouds of dust, the great ewe-dams\n    Call with loud bleatings to their bleating lambs.\n    The little horn\u00e8d ones are gayly drest,\n    With tiny tufts of scarlet on the breast\n    And o\u2019er the neck. While, filling the next place,\n    The woolly sheep advance at solemn pace.\n\n    Amid the tumult now and then the cries\n    Of shepherd-boy to shepherd-dog arise.\n    For now the pitch-marked herd innumerable\n    Press forward: yearlings, two-year-olds as well,\n    Those who have lost their lambs, and those who bear\n    Twin lambs unborn,--and wearily they fare.\n\n    A ragamuffin troop brings up the rear.\n    The barren and past-breeding ewes are here,\n    The lame, the toothless, and the remnant sorry\n    Of many a mighty ram, lean now and hoary,\n    Who from his earthly labours long hath rested,\n    Of honour and of horns alike divested.\n\n    All these who fill the road and mountain-passes--\n    Old, young, good, bad, and neither; sheep, goats, asses--\n    Are Alari\u2019s, every one. He stands the while\n    And watches them, a hundred in a file,\n    Pass on before him; and the man\u2019s eyes laugh.\n    His wand of office is a maple staff.\n\n    And when to pasture with his dogs hies he,\n    And leathern gaiters buttoned to the knee,\n    His forehead to an ample wisdom grown\n    And air serene might be King David\u2019s own,\n    When in his youth he led, as the tale tells,\n    The flocks at eve beside his father\u2019s wells.\n\n    This was the chief toward Lotus Farm who drew,\n    And presently Mir\u00e8io\u2019s self who knew\n    Flitting about the doorway. His heart bounded.\n    \u201cGood Heaven!\u201d he cried, \u201cher praises they have sounded\n    Nowise too loudly! Ne\u2019er saw I such grace\n    Or high or low, in life or pictured face!\u201d\n\n    Only that face to see, his flock forsaking,\n    Alari had come. Yet now his heart was quaking\n    When, standing in the presence of the maid,\n    \u201cWould you so gracious be, fair one,\u201d he said,\n    \u201cAs to point out the way these hills to cross?\n    For else find I myself at utter loss.\u201d\n\n    \u201cOh, yes!\u201d replied the girl, ingenuously,\n    \u201cThou takest the straight road, and comest thereby\n    Into P\u00e8iro-malo desert. Then\n    Follow the winding path till thou attain\n    A portico with an old tomb anear:\n    Two statues of great generals it doth bear.\n\n    _Antiquities_ they call them hereabout.\u201d\n    \u201cThanks, many!\u201d said the youth. \u201cI had come out\n    A thousand of my woolly tribe, or so,\n    To lead into the mountains from La Crau.\n    We leave to-morrow. I their way direct,\n    And sleeping-spots and feeding-ground select.\n\n    \u201cThey bear my mark, and are of fine breed, all;\n    And for my shepherdess, when one I call\n    My own, the nightingales will ever sing.\n    And dared I hope you\u2019d take my offering,\n    Mir\u00e8io dear, no gems I\u2019d tender you,\n    But a carved box-wood cup,--mine own work too!\u201d\n\n    Therewith he brought to light a goblet fair,\n    Wrapped like some sacred relic with all care,\n    And carven of box-wood green. It was his pleasure\n    Such things to fashion in his hours of leisure;\n    And, sitting rapt upon some wayside stone,\n    He wrought divinely with a knife alone.\n\n    He carved him castanets with fingers light,\n    So that his flock would follow him at night\n    Through the dark fields, obedient to their tones.\n    And on the ringing collars, and the bones\n    That served for bell-tongues, he would cut with skill\n    Faces and figures, flowers and birds, at will.\n\n    As for the goblet he was tendering,\n    You would have said that no such fairy thing\n    Was ever wrought by shepherd\u2019s knife or wit:\n    A full-flowered poppy wreathed the rim of it;\n    And in among the languid flowers there\n    Two chamois browsed, and these the handles were.\n\n    A little lower down were maidens three,\n    And certes they were marvellous to see:\n    Near by, beneath a tree, a shepherd-lad\n    Slept, while on tiptoe stole the maidens glad,\n    And sought to seal his lips, ere he should waken,\n    With a grape-cluster from their basket taken.\n\n    Yet even now he smiles at their illusion,\n    So that the foremost maid is all confusion.\n    The odour of the goblet proved it new:\n    The giver had not drunk therefrom; and you\n    Had said, but for their woody colouring,\n    The carven shapes were each a living thing.\n\n    Mir\u00e8io scanned the fair cup curiously.\n    \u201cA tempting offering thine, shepherd!\u201d said she:\n    But suddenly, \u201cA finer one than this\n    Hath my heart\u2019s lord! Shepherd, his love it is!\n    Mine eyes close, his impassioned glances feeling:\n    I falter with the rapture o\u2019er me stealing!\u201d\n\n    So saying, she vanished like a tricksy sprite;\n    And Alari turned, and in the gray twilight\n    Ruefully, carefully, he folded up\n    And bore away again his carven cup,\n    Deeming it sad and strange this winsome elf\n    Her love should yield to any but himself.\n\n    Soon to the farm came suitor number two,\n    A keeper of wild horses from Sambu,--\n    Veran, by name. About his island bower\n    In the great prairies, where the asters flower,\n    He used to keep a hundred milk-white steeds,\n    Who nipped the heads of all the lofty reeds.\n\n    A hundred steeds! Their long manes flowing free\n    As the foam-crested billows of the sea!\n    Wavy and thick and all unshorn were they;\n    And when the horses on their headlong way\n    Plunged all together, their dishevelled hair\n    Seemed the white robes of creatures of the air.\n\n    I say it to the shame of human kind:\n    Camargan steeds were never known to mind\n    The cruel spur more than the coaxing hand.\n    Only a few or so, I understand,\n    By treachery seduced, have halter worn,\n    And from their own salt prairies been borne;\n\n    Yet the day comes when, with a vicious start,\n    Their riders throwing, suddenly they part,\n    And twenty leagues of land unresting scour,\n    Snuffing the wind, till Vacar\u00e8s once more\n    They find, the salt air breathe, and joy to be\n    In freedom after ten years\u2019 slavery.\n\n    For these wild steeds are with the sea at home:\n    Have they not still the colour of the foam?\n    Perchance they brake from old King Neptune\u2019s car;\n    For when the sea turns dark and moans afar,\n    And the ships part their cables in the bay,\n    The stallions of Camargue rejoicing neigh,\n\n    Their sweeping tails like whipcord snapping loudly;\n    Or pawing the earth, all, fiercely and proudly,\n    As though their flanks were stung as with a rod\n    By the sharp trident of the angry god,\n    Who makes the rain a deluge, and the ocean\n    Stirs to its depths in uttermost commotion.\n\n    And these were all Veran\u2019s. Therefore one day\n    The island-chieftain paused upon his way\n    Across La Crau beside Mir\u00e8io\u2019s door;\n    For she was famed, and shall be evermore,\n    For beauty, all about the delta wide\n    Where the great Rhone meeteth the ocean tide.\n\n    Confident came Veran to tell his passion,\n    With paletot, in the Arlesian fashion,\n    Long, light, and backward from his shoulders flowing;\n    His gay-hued girdle like a lizard glowing,\n    The while his head an oil-skin cap protected,\n    Wherefrom the dazzling sun-rays were reflected.\n\n    And first the youth to Master Ramoun drew.\n    \u201cGood-morrow to you, and good fortune too!\u201d\n    He said. \u201cI come from the Camargan Rhone,\n    As keeper P\u00e8ire\u2019s grandson I am known.\n    Thou mindest him! For twenty years or more\n    My grandsire\u2019s horses trod thy threshing-floor.\n\n    \u201cThree dozen had the old man venerable,\n    As thou, beyond a doubt, rememberest well.\n    But would I, Master Ramoun, it were given\n    To thee to see the increase of that leaven!\n    Let ply the sickles! We the rest will do,\n    For now have we an hundred lacking two!\u201d\n\n    \u201cAnd long, my son,\u201d the old man said, \u201cpray I\n    That you may see them feed and multiply.\n    I knew your grandsire well for no brief time;\n    But now on him and me the hoary rime\n    Of age descends, and by the home lamp\u2019s ray\n    We sit content, and no more visits pay.\u201d\n\n    \u201cBut, Master Ramoun,\u201d cried the youthful lover,\n    \u201cAll that I want thou dost not yet discover!\n    For down at Sambu, in my island home,\n    When the Crau folk for loads of litter come,\n    And we help cord them down, it happens so\n    We talk sometimes about the girls of Crau.\n\n    \u201cAnd thy Mir\u00e8io they have all portrayed\n    So charmingly, that, if thou wilt,\u201d he said,\n    \u201cAnd if thou like me, I would gladly be\n    Thy son-in-law!\u201d \u201cGod grant me this to see!\u201d\n    Said Ramoun. \u201cThe brave scion of my friend\n    To me and mine can only honour lend.\u201d\n\n    Then did he fold his hands and them upraise\n    In saint-like gratitude. \u201cAnd yet,\u201d he says,\n    \u201cThe child must like you too, O Veranet!\n    The only one will alway be a pet!\n    Meanwhile, in earnest of the dower I\u2019ll give her,\n    The blessing of the saints be yours for ever!\u201d\n\n    Forthwith summoned Ramoun his little daughter,\n    And told her of the friend who thus had sought her.\n    Pale, trembling, and afraid, \u201cO father dear!\u201d\n    She said, \u201cis not thy wisdom halting here?\n    For I am but a child: thou dost forget.\n    Surely thou wouldst not send me from thee yet!\n\n    \u201cSlowly, so thou hast often said to me,\n    Folk learn to love and live in harmony.\n    For one must know, and also must be known;\n    And even then, my father, all\u2019s not done!\u201d\n    Here the dark shadow on her brow was lit\n    By some bright thought that e\u2019en transfigured it.\n\n    So the drenched flowers, when morning rains are o\u2019er,\n    Lift up their heavy heads, and smile once more.\n    _Mir\u00e8io\u2019s mother held her daughter\u2019s view._\n    Then blandly rose the keeper, \u201cAdieu,\n    Master,\u201d he said: \u201cwho in Camargue hath dwelt\n    Knows the mosquito-sting as soon as felt.\u201d\n\n    Also that summer came to Lotus Place\n    One from Petite Camargue, named Ourrias.\n    Breaker and brander of wild cattle, he;\n    And black and furious all the cattle be\n    Over those briny pastures wild who run,\n    Maddened by flood and fog and scalding sun.\n\n    Alone this Ourrias had them all in charge\n    Summer and winter, where they roamed at large.\n    And so, among the cattle born and grown,\n    Their build, their cruel heart, became his own;\n    His the wild eye, dark colour, dogged look.\n    How often, throwing off his coat, he took\n\n    His cudgel,--savage weaner!--never blenching,\n    And first the young calves from the udders wrenching,\n    Upon the wrathful mother fell so madly\n    That cudgel after cudgel brake he gladly,\n    Till she, by his brute fury master\u00e8d,\n    Wild-eyed and lowing to the pine-copse fled!\n\n    Oft in the branding at Camargue had he\n    Oxen and heifers, two-year-olds and three,\n    Seized by the horns and stretched upon the ground.\n    His forehead bare the scar of an old wound\n    Fiery and forked like lightning. It was said\n    That once the green plain with his blood was red.\n\n    On a great branding-day befell this thing:\n    To aid the mighty herd in mustering,\n    Li Santo, Agui Morto, Albaron,\n    And Faraman a hundred horsemen strong\n    Had sent into the desert. And the herd\n    Roused from its briny lairs, and, forward spurred\n\n    By tridents of the branders close behind,\n    Fell on the land like a destroying wind.\n    Heifers and bulls in headlong gallop borne\n    Plunged, crushing centaury and salicorne;\n    And at the branding-booth at last they mustered,\n    Just where a crowd three hundred strong had clustered.\n\n    A moment, as if scared, the beasts were still.\n    Then, when the cruel spur once more they feel,\n    They start afresh, into a run they break,\n    And thrice the circuit of the arena make;\n    As marterns fly a dog, or hawks afar\n    By eagles in the Luberon hunted are.\n\n    Then Ourrias--what ne\u2019er was done before--\n    Leaped from his horse beside the circus-door\n    Amid the crowd. The cattle start again,\n    All saving five young bulls, and scour the plain;\n    But these, with flaming eyes and horns defying\n    Heaven itself, are through the arena flying.\n\n    And he pursues them. As a mighty wind\n    Drives on the clouds, he goads them from behind,\n    And presently outstrips them in the race;\n    Then thumps them with the cruel goad he sways,\n    Dances before them as infuriate,\n    And lets them feel his own fists\u2019 heavy weight.\n\n    The people clap and shout, while Ourrias\n    White with Olympic dust encountered has\n    One bull, and seized him by the horns at length;\n    And now \u2019tis head to muzzle, strength for strength.\n    The monster strains his prisoned horns to free\n    Until he bleeds, and bellows horribly.\n\n    But vain his fury, useless all his trouble!\n    The neatherd had the art to turn and double\n    And force the huge head with his shoulder round,\n    And shove it roughly back, till on the ground\n    Christian and beast together rolled, and made\n    A formless heap like some huge barricade.\n\n    The tamarisks are shaken by the cry\n    Of \u201cBravo Ourrias! That\u2019s done valiantly!\u201d\n    While five stout youths the bull pin to the sward;\n    And Ourrias, his triumph to record,\n    Seizes the red-hot iron with eager hand,\n    The vanquished monster on the hip to brand.\n\n    Then came a troop of girls on milk-white ponies,--\n    Arlesians,--flushed and panting every one is,\n    As o\u2019er the arena at full gallop borne\n    They offer him a noble drinking-horn\n    Brimful of wine; then turn and disappear,\n    Each followed by her faithful cavalier.\n\n    The hero heeds them not. His mind is set\n    On the four monsters to be branded yet:\n    The mower toils the harder for the grass\n    He sees unmown. And so this Ourrias\n    Fought the more savagely as his foes warmed,\n    And conquered in the end,--but not unharmed.\n\n    White-spotted and with horns magnificent,\n    The fourth beast grazed the green in all content.\n    \u201cNow, man, enough!\u201d in vain the neatherds shouted;\n    Couched is the trident and the caution flouted;\n    With perspiration streaming, bosom bare,\n    Ourrias the spotted bull charged then and there!\n\n    He meets his enemy, a blow delivers\n    Full in the face; but ah! the trident shivers.\n    The beast becomes a demon with the wound:\n    The brander grasps his horns, is whirled around,--\n    They start together, and are borne amain,\n    Crushing the salicornes along the plain.\n\n    The mounted herdsmen, on their long goads leaning,\n    Regard the mortal fray; for each is meaning\n    Dire vengeance now. The man the brute would crush,\n    The brute bears off the man with furious rush;\n    The while with heavy, frothy tongue he clears\n    The blood that to his hanging lip adheres.\n\n    The brute prevailed. The man fell dazed, and lay\n    Like a vile rakeful in the monster\u2019s way.\n    \u201cSham dead!\u201d went up a cry of agony.\n    Vain words! The beast his victim lifted high\n    On cruel horns and savage head inclined,\n    And flung him six and forty feet behind!\n\n    Once more a deafening outcry filled the place\n    And shook the tamarisks. But Ourrias\n    Fell prone to earth, and ever after wore he\n    The ugly scar that marred his brow so sorely.\n    Now, mounted on his mare, he paces slow\n    With goad erect to seek Mir\u00e8io.\n\n    It chanced the little maid was all alone.\n    She had, that morning, to the fountain gone;\n    And here, with sleeves and petticoats uprolled\n    And small feet dabbling in the water cold,\n    She was her cheese-forms cleaning with shave-grass;\n    And, lady saints! how beautiful she was!\n\n    \u201cGood-morrow, pretty maid!\u201d began the wooer,\n    \u201cThy forms will shine like mirrors, to be sure!\n    Will it offend thee, if I lead my mare\n    To drink out of thy limpid streamlet there?\u201d\n    \u201cPray give her all thou wilt, at the dam head:\n    We\u2019ve water here to spare!\u201d the maiden said.\n\n    \u201cFair one!\u201d spake the wild youth, \u201cif e\u2019er thou come\n    As pilgrim or as bride to make thy home\n    At Sylvar\u00e8al by the noisy wave,\n    No life of toil like this down here thou\u2019lt have!\n    Our fierce black cows are never milked, but these\n    Roam all at large, and women sit at ease.\u201d\n\n    \u201cYoung man, in cattle-land, I\u2019ve heard them say,\n    Maids die of languor.\u201d--\u201cPretty maiden, nay:\n    There is no languor where two are together!\u201d\n    \u201cBut brows are blistered in that burning weather,\n    And bitter waters drunk.\u201d--\u201cWhen the sun shines,\n    My lady, thou shalt sit beneath the pines!\u201d\n\n    \u201cAh! but they say, young man, those pines are laden\n    With coils of emerald serpents.\u201d--\u201cFairest maiden,\n    We\u2019ve herons also, and flamingoes red\n    That chase them down the Rhone with wings outspread\n    Like rosy scarfs.\u201d--\u201cThen, I would have thee know\n    Lotus and pine too far asunder grow!\u201d\n\n    \u201cBut priests and maids, my beauty, ne\u2019er can tell,\n    The saw affirms, the land where they may dwell\n    And eat their bread.\u201d--\u201cLet mine but eaten be\n    With him I love: that were enough,\u201d said she,\n    \u201cTo lure me from the home-nest to remove.\u201d\n    \u201cIf that be so, sweet one, give me thy love!\u201d\n\n    \u201cThy suit,\u201d Mir\u00e8io said, \u201cmayhap I\u2019ll grant!\n    But first, young man, yon water-lily plant\n    Will bear a cluster of columbine grapes.\n    Yon hills will melt from all their solid shapes,\n    That goad will flower, and all the world will go\n    In boats unto the citadel of Baux!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCANTO V.\n\n_The Battle._\n\n\n    Cool with the coming eve the wind was blowing,\n    The shadows of the poplars longer growing;\n    Yet still the westering sun was two hours high,\n    As the tired ploughman noted wistfully,--\n    Two hours of toil ere the fresh twilight come,\n    And wifely greeting by the door at home.\n\n    But Ourrias the brander left the spring,\n    The insult he had suffered pondering.\n    So moved to wrath was he, so stung with shame,\n    The blood into his very forehead came;\n    And, muttering deadly spite beneath his teeth,\n    He drave at headlong gallop o\u2019er the heath.\n\n    As damsons in a bush, the stones of Crau\n    Are plentiful; and Ourrias, fuming so,\n    Would gladly with the senseless flints have striven,\n    Or through the sun itself his lance have driven.\n    A wild boar from its lair forced to decamp,\n    And scour the desert slopes of black Oulympe.\n\n    Ere turning on the dogs upon his track,\n    Erects the rugged bristles of his back,\n    And whets his tusks upon the mountain oaks.\n    And now young Vincen with his comely looks\n    Must needs have chosen the herdsman\u2019s very path,\n    And meets him squarely, boiling o\u2019er with wrath.\n\n    Whereas the simple dreamer wandered smiling,\n    His memory with a sweet tale beguiling,\n    That he had heard a fond girl whispering\n    Beneath a mulberry-tree one morn in spring.\n    Straight is he as a cane from the Durance;\n    And love, peace, joy, beam from his countenance.\n\n    The soft air swells his loose, unbottoned shirt:\n    His firm, bare feet are by the stones unhurt,\n    And light as lizard slips he o\u2019er the way.\n    Oh! many a time, when eve was cool and gray,\n    And all the land in shadow lay concealed,\n    He used to roam about the darkling field,\n\n    Where the chill airs had shut the tender clover;\n    Or, like a butterfly, descend and hover\n    Around the homestead of Mir\u00e8io;\n    Or, hidden cleverly, his hiding show,\n    Like a gold-crested or an ivy wren,\n    By a soft chirrup uttered now and then.\n\n    And she would know who called her, and would fly\n    Swift, silent, to the mulberry-tree hard by,\n    With quickened pulses. Fair is the moonlight\n    Upon narcissus-buds in summer night,\n    And sweet the rustle of the zephyr borne\n    In summer eve over the ripening corn,\n\n    Until the whole, in infinite undulation,\n    Seems like a great heart palpitant with passion.\n    Also the chamois hath a joy most keen\n    When through the Queiras, that most wild ravine\n    All day before the huntsman he hath flown,\n    And stands at length upon a peak, alone\n\n    With larches and with ice fields, looking forth.\n    But all these joys and charms are little worth,\n    With the brief rapture of the hours compared--\n    Ah, brief!--that Vincen and Mir\u00e8io shared,\n    When, by the friendly shadows favour\u00e8d,\n    (Speak low, my lips, for trees can hear, \u2019tis said,)\n\n    Their hands would seek each other and would meet,\n    And silence fall upon them, while their feet\n    Played idly with the pebbles in their way.\n    Until, not knowing better what to say,\n    The tyro-lover laughingly would tell\n    Of all the small mishaps that him befell;\n\n    Of nights he passed beneath the open heaven;\n    Of bites the farmers\u2019 dogs his legs had given,\n    And show his scars. And then the maid told o\u2019er\n    Her tasks of that day and the day before;\n    And what her parents said; and how the goat\n    With trellis-flowers had filled his greedy throat.\n\n    Once only--Vincen knew not what he did;\n    But, stealthy as a wild-cat, he had slid\n    Along the grasses of the barren moor,\n    And prostrate lay his darling\u2019s feet before.\n    Then--soft, my lips, because the trees can hear--\n    He said, \u201cGive me one kiss, Mir\u00e8io dear!\n\n    \u201cI cannot eat nor drink,\u201d he made his moan,\n    \u201cFor the great love I bear you! Yea, mine own,\n    Your breath the life out of my blood has taken.\n    Go not, Mir\u00e8io! Leave me not forsaken!\n    From dawn to dawn, at least, let a true lover\n    Kneel, and your garment\u2019s hem with kisses cover!\u201d\n\n    \u201cWhy, Vincen,\u201d said Mir\u00e8io, \u201cthat were sin!\n    Then would the black-cap and the penduline\n    Tell everywhere the secret they had heard!\u201d\n    \u201cNo fear of that! for every tell-tale bird\n    I\u2019d banish from La Crau to Arles,\u201d said he;\n    \u201cFor you, Mir\u00e8io, are as heaven to me!\n\n    \u201cNow list! There grows a plant in river Rhone,\n    Eel-grass, the name whereby that plant is known,\n    Two flowers it beareth, each on its own stem,\n    And a great space of water severs them,\n    For the plant springs out of the river\u2019s bed;\n    But when the time for wooing comes,\u201d he said,\n\n    \u201cOne flower leaps to the surface of the flood,\n    And in the genial sunshine opes its bud.\n    Whereon the other, seeing this so fair,\n    Swims eagerly to seize and kiss her there;\n    But, for the tangled weeds, can she not gain\n    Her love, till her frail stem breaks with the strain.\n\n    \u201cNow free at last, but dying, she doth raise\n    Her pale lips for her sister\u2019s last embrace.\n    So I! One kiss, and I will die to-night!\n    We are all alone!\u201d Mir\u00e8io\u2019s cheek grew white.\n    Then sprang he, wild-eyed as a lissome beast,\n    And clasped her. Hurriedly the maid released\n\n    Herself from his too daring touch. Once more\n    He strove to seize,--but ah! my lips, speak lower,\n    For the trees hear,--\u201cGive over!\u201d cried the girl,\n    And all her slender frame did writhe and curl.\n    Yet would he frantic cling; but straight thereafter\n    She pinched him, bent, slipped, and, with ringing laughter,\n\n    The saucy little damsel sped away,\n    And lifted up her voice in mocking lay.\n    So did these two, upon the twilight wold\n    Their moon-wheat sow, after the proverb old.\n    Flowery the moments were, and fleet with pleasure:\n    Of such our Lord giveth abundant measure\n\n    To peasants and to kings alike. And so\n    I come to what befell that eve on Crau.\n    Ourrias and Vincen met. As lightning cleaves\n    The first tall tree, Ourrias his wrath relieves.\n    \u201c\u2019Tis you son of a hag, for aught I know,\n    Who have bewitched her,--this Mir\u00e8io;\n\n    \u201cAnd since your path would seem to lie her way,\n    Tell her, tatterdemalion, what I say!\n    No more for her nor for her weasel face\n    Care I than for the ancient clout,\u201d he says,\n    \u201cThat from your shoulders fluttering I see.\n    Go, pretty coxcomb, tell her this from me!\u201d\n\n    Stopped Vincen thunderstruck. His wrath leaped high\n    As leaps a fiery rocket to the sky.\n    \u201cIs it your pleasure that I strangle you,\n    Base churl,\u201d he said, \u201cor double you in two?\u201d\n    And faced him with a look he well might dread,\n    As when a starving leopard turns her head.\n\n    His face was purple, quivered all his frame.\n    \u201cOh, better try!\u201d the mocking answer came.\n    \u201cYou\u2019ll roll headfirst upon the gravel, neighbour!\n    Bah, puny hands! meet for no better labour\n    Than to twist osiers when they\u2019re supple made;\n    Or to rob hen-roosts, lurking in the shade!\u201d\n\n    Stung by the insult, \u201cYea, I can twist osier,\n    And I can twist your neck with all composure,\u201d\n    Said Vincen. \u201cCoward, it were well you ran!\n    Else vow I by St. James the Gallican,\n    You\u2019ll never see your tamarisks any more!\n    This iron first shall bray your limbs before!\u201d\n\n    Wondering, and charmed to find by such quick chance\n    A man whereon to wreak his vengeance,\n    \u201cWait!\u201d said the herdsman: \u201cbe not over-hot!\n    First let me have a pipe, young idiot!\u201d\n    And brought to light a buckskin pouch, and set\n    Between his teeth a broken calumet.\n\n    Then scornfully, \u201cWhile rocking you, my lamb,\n    Under the goose-foot, did your gypsy-dam\n    Ne\u2019er tell the tale of Jan de l\u2019Ours, I pray?--\n    Two men in one, who, having gone one day,\n    By orders, to plough stubble with two yoke,\n    Seized plough and teams, as shepherds do a crook,\n\n    \u201cAnd hurled them o\u2019er a poplar-tree hard by?\n    Well for you, urchin, there\u2019s no poplar nigh!\n    You couldn\u2019t lead a stray ass whence it came!\u201d\n    But Vincen stood like pointer to the game.\n    \u201cI say,\u201d he roared in tones stentorian,\n    \u201cWill you come down, or must I fetch you, man\n\n    \u201cOr hog? Come! Brag no more your beast astride\n    You flinch now we are going to decide\n    Which sucked the better milk, or you or I?\n    Was it you, bearded scoundrel? We will try!\n    Why, I will tread you like a sheaf of wheat,\n    If you dare flout yon maiden true and sweet.\n\n    \u201cNo fairer flower in this land blossomed ever;\n    And I who am called Vincen, basket-weaver,\n    Yes, I--her suitor, be it understood--\n    Will wash your slanders out in your own blood,\n    If such you have!\u201d Quoth Ourrias, \u201cI am ready,\n    My gypsy-suitor to a cupboard! Steady!\u201d\n\n    Therewith alights. They fling their coats away,\n    Fists fly, and pebbles roll before the fray.\n    They fall upon each other in the manner\n    Of two young bulls who, in the vast savannah,\n    Where the great sun glares in the tropic sky,\n    The sleek sides of a dark young heifer spy\n\n    In the tall grasses, lowing amorous.\n    The thunder bursts within them, challenged thus.\n    Mad, blind with love, they paw, they stare, they spring;\n    And furious charge, their muzzles lowering;\n    Retire, and charge again. The ominous sound\n    Of crashing horns fills all the spaces round.\n\n    And long, I ween, the battle is, and dire.\n    The combatants are maddened by desire.\n    Puissant Love urges and goads them on.\n    So here, with either doughty champion.\n    \u2019Twas Ourrias who received the first hard touch;\n    And, being threatened with another such,\n\n    Lifts his huge fist and lays young Vincen flat\n    As with a club. \u201cThere, urchin, parry that!\u201d\n    \u201cSee if I have a scratch, man!\u201d cried the lad.\n    The other, \u201cBastard, count the knocks you\u2019ve had!\u201d\n    \u201cCount you the ounces of hot blood,\u201d he shouted,\n    \u201cMonster, that from your flattened nose have spouted!\u201d\n\n    And then they grapple; bend and stretch their best,\n    With foot to foot, shoulder to shoulder, prest.\n    Their arms are wreathed and coiled like serpents fell\n    The veins within their necks to bursting swell\n    And tense their muscles with the mighty strain.\n    Long time they stiff and motionless remain,\n\n    With pulsing flanks, like flap of bustard\u2019s wing.\n    And, one against the other steadying,\n    Bear up like the abutments huge and wide\n    Of that great bridge the Gardoun doth bestride.\n    Anon they part: their doubled fists upraise,\n    Once more the pestle in the mortar brays,\n\n    And in their fury ply they tooth or nail.\n    Good God! the blows of Vincen fall like hail.\n    Yet ah! what club-like hits the herdsman deals!\n    And, as their crushing weight the weaver feels,\n    He whirls as whirls a sling about his foe,\n    And backward bends to deal his fiercest blow.\n\n    \u201cLook your last, villain!\u201d Ere the word said he,\n    The mighty herdsman seized him bodily,\n    And flung him o\u2019er his shoulder far away,\n    As a Proven\u00e7al shovels wheat. He lay\n    A moment on his side, not sorely hurt.\n    \u201cPick up, O worm!\u201d cried Ourrias,--\u201cpick the dirt\n\n    \u201cYou have displaced, and eat it, if you will!\u201d\n    \u201cEnough of that! Brute who was broken ill,\n    We\u2019ll have three rounds before this game is over!\u201d\n    With bitter hate retorts the poor boy-lover;\n    And, reddening to his very hair for shame,\n    Rears like a dragon to retrieve his fame.\n\n    And, daring death, he on the brute hath flown,\n    And dealt a blow marvellous in such an one\n    Straight from the shoulder to the other\u2019s breast,\n    Who reeled and groped for that whereon to rest,\n    With darkening eyes and brow cold-beaded, till\n    He crashed to earth, and all La Crau was still.\n\n    Its misty limit blent with the far sea;\n    The sea\u2019s with the blue ether, dreamily.\n    Still in mid-air there floated shining things,\n    Swans, and flamingoes on their rosy wings,\n    Come to salute the last of the sunset\n    Along the desert meres that glimmered yet.\n\n    The white mare of the herdsman lazily\n    Pulled at the dwarf-oak leaves that grew thereby:\n    The iron stirrups of the creature jangled,\n    As loose and heavy at her sides they dangled.\n    \u201cStir, and I crush you, ruffian!\u201d Vincen said:\n    \u201c\u2019Tis not by feet that men are measur\u00e8d!\u201d\n\n    Then in the silent wold the victor pressed\n    His heel upon the brander\u2019s prostrate breast,\n    Who writhed beneath it vainly, while the blood\n    Sluggish and dark from lips and nostrils flowed.\n    Thrice did he strive the horny foot to move,\n    And thrice the basket-weaver from above\n\n    Dealt him a blow that levelled him once more,\n    Until he haggard lay, and gasping sore\n    Like some sea-monster. \u201cSo your mother, then,\n    Was not, it seems, the only mould of men,\u201d\n    Said Vincen, jeeringly. \u201cGo tell the tale\n    Of my fist\u2019s weight to bulls in Sylvar\u00e8al.\n\n    \u201cGo to the waste of the Camargan isle,\n    And hide your bruises and your shame awhile\n    Among your beasts!\u201d So saying, he loosed his hold,\n    As some great ram, a shearer in the fold\n    Pins with his knees till shorn; then, with a blow\n    Upon the crupper, bids him freely go.\n\n    Bursting with rage and all defiled with dust,\n    The herdsman went his ways. But wherefore must\n    He linger ferreting about the heath,\n    Amid the oaks and broom, under his breath\n    Muttering curses? until suddenly\n    He stoops, then swings his savage trident high,\n\n    And darts on Vincen. For him all is done.\n    Vain were the hope that murderous lance to shun,\n    And the boy paled as on the day he died;\n    Not fearing death, but that he could not bide\n    The treachery. A felon\u2019s prey to be!\n    That stung the manly soul to agony.\n\n    \u201cTraitor, you dare not!\u201d But the lad restrains\n    The word, firm as a martyr in his pains;\n    For yon\u2019s the farmstead hidden by the trees.\n    Tenderly, wistfully, he turns to these.\n    \u201cO my Mir\u00e8io!\u201d said the eager eye,\n    \u201cLook hither, darling,--\u2019tis for you I die!\u201d\n\n    Great heart, intent as ever on his love!\n    \u201cSay your prayers!\u201d thundered Ourrias from above\n    In a hoarse voice, and pitiless to hear,\n    And pierced the victim with his iron spear.\n    Then, with a heavy groan, the fated lover\n    Upon the green-sward rolled, and all was over.\n\n    The beaten grass is dark with human gore,\n    And the field-ants already coursing o\u2019er\n    The prostrate limbs ere Ourrias mounts, and hies\n    Under the rising moon in frantic wise;\n    Muttering, as the flints beneath him fly,\n    \u201cTo-night the Crau wolves will feast merrily.\u201d\n\n    Deep stillness reigned in Crau. Its limit dim\n    Blent with the sea\u2019s on the horizon\u2019s rim,\n    The sea\u2019s with the blue ether. Gleaming things,\n    Swans, and flamingoes on their ruddy wings,\n    Came to salute the last declining light\n    Among the desert meres that glimmered white.\n\n    Away, Ourrias, away! Draw not the rein,\n    Urge thy unresting gallop o\u2019er the plain,\n    While the green heron shout their fearsome cries\n    In thy mare\u2019s ear, as the good creature flies,\n    Till her ear trembles, and her nostrils quiver,\n    And eyes dilate. That night the great Rhone River\n\n    Slept on his stony bed beneath the moon,\n    As pilgrim of Sainte Baume may lay him down,\n    Fevered and weary, in a deep ravine.\n    \u201cHo!\u201d cries the ruffian to three boatmen seen,\n    \u201cHo! Boat ahoy! We must cross, hark ye there!\n    On board or in the hold, I and my mare!\u201d\n\n    \u201cOn board, my hearty, then, without delay!\n    There shines the night-lamp! And lured by its ray,\u201d\n    Answered a cheery voice, \u201cabout our prow\n    And oars the fish frisk playfully enow.\n    It is good fishing, and the hour is fair.\n    On board at once! We have no time to spare.\u201d\n\n    Therewith upon the poop the villain clomb.\n    While, tethered to the stern, amid the foam\n    Swam the white mare. Now fishes huge and scaly\n    Forsook their grottoes, and leaped upward gayly,\n    And flashed on the smooth surface of the stream.\n    \u201cHave a care, pilot! For this craft I deem\n\n    \u201cNowise too sound.\u201d And he who spake once more\n    Lay foot to stretcher, bent the supple oar.\n    \u201cSo I perceive. Ah!\u201d was the pilot\u2019s word,\n    \u201cI tell thee we\u2019ve an evil freight on board.\u201d\n    No more. And all the while the vessel old\n    Staggered and pitched and like a drunkard rolled.\n\n    A crazy craft! Rotten its timbers all.\n    \u201cThunder of God!\u201d Ourrias began to call,\n    Seizing the helm his tottering feet to stay.\n    Whereon the boat in some mysterious way\n    Seemed moved to writhing, as a wounded snake\n    Whose back a shepherd with a stone doth break.\n\n    \u201cDoth all this tumult, comrades, bode disaster?\u201d\n    Appealed the brander, growing pale as plaster.\n    \u201cAnd will you drown me?\u201d Brake the pilot out,\n    \u201cI cannot hold the craft! She springs about\n    And wriggles like a carp. Villain, I know\n    You\u2019ve murdered some one, and not long ago!\u201d\n\n    \u201cWho told you that? May Satan if I have\n    Thrust me with his pitch-fork beneath the wave.\u201d\n    \u201cAh!\u201d said the livid pilot, \u201cthen I err!\n    I had forgot the cause of all this stir.\n    \u2019Tis Saint Medard\u2019s to-night, when poor drowned men\n    Come from their dismal pits to land again,\n    \u201cHow deep and dark soe\u2019er their watery prison.\n    Look! Even now hath from the wave arisen\n    The long procession of the weeping dead!\n    Barefoot, poor things! the shingly shore they tread,\n    The turbid water dripping, dripping, see,\n    From matted hair and stained clothes heavily.\n\n    \u201cSee them defile under the poplars tall,\n    Carrying lighted tapers, one and all.\n    While up the river\u2019s bank, now and anon,\n    Eagerly clambereth another one.\n    \u2019Tis they who toss our wretched craft about\n    So like a raging storm, I make no doubt.\n\n    \u201cTheir cramped legs and their mottled arms--ah, see!--\n    And heavy heads they from the weeds would free.\n    Oh, how they watch the stars as on they go,\n    Quaff the fresh air and thrill at sight of Crau,\n    And scent the harvest odours the winds bring,\n    In their brief hour of motion revelling!\n\n    \u201cAnd still the water from their garments raineth,\n    And still another and another gaineth\n    The river-bank. And there,\u201d the boatman moans,\n    \u201cAre the old men, women, and little ones:\n    They spurn the clinging mud. Ah me!\u201d he said,\n    \u201cYon ghastly things abhor the fisher\u2019s trade.\n\n    \u201cThe lamprey and the perch they made their game,\n    And now are they become food for the same.\n    But what is this? Another piteous band,\n    Travelling in a line along the sand?\n    Ah, yes! the poor deserted maids,\u201d quoth he,\n    \u201cWho asked the Rhone for hospitality,\n\n    \u201cAnd sought to hide their shame in the great river.\n    Alas! alas! They seem to moan for ever.\n    And, oh, how painfully, fond hearts, ill fated,\n    Labour the bosoms by the dank weeds weighted!\n    Is it the water dripping that one hears\n    From their long veils of hair, or is it tears?\u201d\n\n    He ceased. The wending souls bare each a light,\n    Intently following in the silent night\n    The river-shore. And those two listening\n    Might even have heard the whirr of a moth\u2019s wing.\n    \u201cAre they not, pilot,\u201d asked the awe-struck brander,\n    \u201cSeeking somewhat in the gloom where they wander?\u201d\n\n    \u201cAh, yes, poor things!\u201d the master-boatman said.\n    \u201cSee how from side to side is turned each head.\n    \u2019Tis their good works they seek,--their acts of faith\n    Sown upon earth ere their untimely death.\n    And when they spy the same, \u2019tis said moreover,\n    They haste thereto, as haste the sheep to clover,\n\n    \u201cThe good work or the act of faith to cull.\n    And when of such as these their hands are full,\n    Lo, they all turn to flowers! And they who gather\n    Go tender them with joy to God the Father,\n    Being by the flowers to Peter\u2019s gate conveyed.\n    Thus those who find a watery grave,\u201d he said,\n\n    \u201cThe gracious God granteth a respite to,\n    That they may save themselves. But some anew\n    Ere the day dawn will bury their good deeds\n    Deep underneath the surging river-weeds.\n    And some,\u201d the pilot whispered,--\u201csome are worse,\n    Devourers of the needy, _murderers_,\n\n    \u201cAtheists, traitors, that worm-eaten kind.\n    These hunt the river-shore, but only find\n    Their sins and crimes like great stones in the gravel\n    Whereon their bare feet stumble as they travel.\n    The mule when dead is beaten never more;\n    But these God\u2019s mercy shall in vain implore\n    \u201cUnder the roaring wave.\u201d Here, sore afraid,\n    Ourrias a hand upon the pilot laid,\n    Like robber at a turning. \u201cLook!\u201d he cries,\n    \u201cThere\u2019s water in the hold!\u201d Whereon replies\n    The pilot, coolly, \u201cAnd the bucket\u2019s there!\u201d\n    The herdsman bales for life in his despair.\n\n    Ay, bale, brave Ourrias! But there danced that night,\n    On Trincataio bridge, the water-sprite.\n    Madly the white mare strove to break her halter.\n    \u201cWhat ails you, Blanco?\u201d Ourrias \u2019gan falter.\n    \u201cFear you the dead yonder upon the verge?\u201d\n    Over the gunnel plashed the rising surge.\n\n    \u201cCaptain, the craft sinks, and I cannot swim!\u201d\n    \u201cI know no help,\u201d the pilot answered him.\n    \u201cWe must go down. But, presently,\u201d he said,\n    \u201cA cable will be heaved us by the dead,--\n    The dead you fear so,--on the river-bank.\u201d\n    And even as he spake the vessel sank.\n\n    The tapers gleaming far and fitfully\n    In the poor ghostly hands flared forth so high,\n    They sent a shaft of vivid brilliance\n    Across the murky river\u2019s broad expanse;\n    Then, as a spider in the morn you see\n    Glide o\u2019er his late-spun thread, the boatmen three,\n\n    Being all spirits, leaped out of the stream,\n    And caught and swooped along the dazzling beam.\n    And Ourrias, too, the cable sought to seize\n    Amid the gurgling waters, even as these;\n    But sought it vainly. And the water-sprite\n    Danced upon Trincataio bridge that night.\n\n\n\n\nCANTO VI.\n\n_The Witch._\n\n\n    The merry birds, until the white dawn showeth\n    Clear in the east, are silent every one.\n    Silent the odorous Earth until she knoweth\n    In her warm heart the coming of the Sun,\n    As maiden in her fairest robes bedight\n    Breathless awaits her lover and her flight.\n\n    Across La Crau three swineherds held their way\n    From St. Chamas the wealthy, whither they\n    Had to the market gone. Their herds were sold,\n    And o\u2019er their shoulders pouches full of gold\n    Were hung, and by their hanging cloaks concealed:\n    So, chatting idly, they attained the field\n\n    Of the late strife. Suddenly one cried, \u201cHush!\n    Comrades, I hear a moaning in the bush.\u201d\n    \u201c\u2019Tis but a tolling bell,\u201d the rest averred,\n    \u201cFrom Saint Martin\u2019s or from Maussano heard,\n    Or the north wind the dwarf-oak limbs a-swaying.\u201d\n    But, ere they spake, all were their steps delaying,\n\n    Arrested by so piteous a groan\n    It rent the very heart. And every one\n    Cried, \u201cHoly Jesus! Here has been foul play!\u201d\n    Then crossed themselves, and gently took their way\n    Toward the sound. Ah, what a sight there was!\n    Vincen, supine upon the stony grass,--\n\n    The grass blood-stained, the trampled earth besprent\n    With willow rods. His shirt to ribbons rent,\n    Stabbed in the breast, left on the moor alone,\n    Had lain the poor lad through the night now gone,\n    With but the stars to watch. But the dim ray\n    Of early dawn, as ebbed his life away,\n\n    Falling upon his lids had oped them wide.\n    Straightway the good Samaritans turned aside\n    From their home-path, stooped, and a hammock made\n    Of their three cloaks, thereon the victim laid,\n    Then bare him tenderly upon their arms\n    Unto the nearest door,--the Lotus-Farm\u2019s....\n\n    O friends,--Proven\u00e7al poets brave and dear,\n    Who love my songs of other days to hear!\n    You, Roumanille, who blend with songs you sing\n    Tears, girlish laughter, and the breath of spring;\n    And you, proud Aubanel, who stray where quiver\n    The changing lights and shades of wood and river,\n\n    To soothe a heart oppressed by love\u2019s fond dream;\n    You, Crousillat, who your belov\u00e8d stream,\n    The bright Touloubro, make more truly famous\n    Than did the grim star-gazer Nostradamus;\n    And you, Anselme, who see, half-sad, half-smiling,\n    Fair girls under the trellised arbours whiling\n\n    Their hours away; and you, my Paul, the witty,\n    And peasant Tavan, who attune your ditty\n    Unto the crickets\u2019 chirrup, while you peer\n    Wistful at your poor pickaxe; and most dear,\n    Adolphe Dumas, who when Durance is deep\n    With his spring flood, come back your thoughts to steep,\n\n    And warm the Frenchman at Proven\u00e7al suns,\n    \u2019Twas you who met my own Mir\u00e8io once\n    At your great Paris,--met her tenderly,\n    Where she had flown, impetuous, daring, shy;\n    And last Garcin, brave son of a brave sire,\n    Whose soul mounts upward on a wind of fire;--\n\n    Upbear me with your holy breath as now\n    I climb for the fair fruit on that high bough!...\n    The swineherds paused at Master Ramoun\u2019s door,\n    Crying, \u201cGood-morrow! Yonder, on the moor,\n    We found this poor lad wounded in the breast.\n    \u2019Twere well that his sore hurt were quickly drest.\u201d\n\n    So laid their burden on the broad, flat stone.\n    They tell Mir\u00e8io, to the garden gone\n    To gather fruit, who, basket on her side,\n    Fled wildly to the spot. Thither, too, hied\n    The labourers all; but she, her basket falling,\n    Stretched forth her hands on Mother Mary calling.\n\n    \u201cVincen is bleeding! Ah, what have they done?\u201d\n    Then, lovingly, the head of the dear one\n    She lifted, turned, and long and mutely gazed\n    As though with horror and with grief amazed,\n    Her large tears dropping fast. And well he knows\n    That tender touch to be Mir\u00e8io\u2019s,\n\n    And faintly breathes, \u201cPity, and pray for me,\n    Because I need the good God\u2019s company!\u201d\n    \u201cYour parched throat moisten with this cordial. Strive\n    To drink,\u201d old Ramoun said: \u201cyou will revive.\u201d\n    The maiden seized the cup, and drop by drop\n    She made him drink, and spake to him of hope\n\n    Till his pain lulled. \u201cMay God keep you alway\n    From such distress, and your sweet care repay!\u201d\n    Said Vincen; and the brave boy would not tell\n    It was for her sake that he fought and fell;\n    But \u201cSplitting osier on my breast,\u201d he said,\n    \u201cThe sharp knife slipped, and pierced me.\u201d Therewith strayed\n\n    His thought back to his love as bee to flower.\n    \u201cThe anguish on thy face, dear, in this hour\n    Is far more bitter than my wound to me.\n    The pretty basket that in company\n    We once began will be unfinished now.\n    Would I had seen it full to overflow,\n\n    \u201cDear, with thy love! Oh, stay! Life\u2019s in thine eyes.\n    Ah, if thou couldst do something,\u201d the lad cries,\n    \u201cFor him,--the poor old basket-weaver there,--\n    My father, worn with toil!\u201d In her despair,\n    Mir\u00e8io bathes the wound, while some bring lint,\n    And some run to the hills for healing mint.\n\n    Then the maid\u2019s mother spake: \u201cLet four men rally,\n    And to the Fairies\u2019 Cavern, in the valley\n    They call Enfer, bear up this wounded man.\n    The deadlier the hurt, the sooner can\n    The old witch heal. Scale first the cliffs of Baux,\n    And circling vultures the cave\u2019s mouth will show.\u201d\n\n    A hole flush with the rocks, by lizards haunted,\n    And veiled by tufts of rosemary thereby planted.\n    For ever, since the holy Angelus swells,\n    In Mary\u2019s honour from the minster-bells,\n    The antique fairies have been forced to hide\n    From sunlight, and in this deep cavern bide.\n\n    Strange, airy things, they used to flit about\n    Dimly, \u2019twixt form and substance, in and out:\n    Half-earthly made, to be the visible\n    Spirit of Nature; female made as well,\n    To tame the savagery of primal men.\n    But these were fair in fairies\u2019 eyes, and then\n\n    They loved: and so, infatuate, lifted not\n    Mortals unto their own celestial lot;\n    But, lusting, fell into our low estate,\n    As birds fall, whom a snake doth fascinate,\n    From their high places. But, while thus I write,\n    The bearers have borne Vincen up the height.\n\n    A dim, straight passage led the cavern toward,\n    A rocky funnel where they gently lowered\n    The sufferer; and he did not go alone,--\n    Yet was Mir\u00e8io\u2019s self the only one\n    Who dared to follow down that awesome road,\n    Commending, as she went, his soul to God.\n\n    The bottom gained, they found a grotto cold\n    And vast; midway whereof a beldam old,\n    The witch Taven, sat silent, crouching lowly\n    As lost in thought and utter melancholy,\n    Holding a sprig of brome, and muttering,\n    \u201cSome call thee devil\u2019s wheat, poor little thing,\n\n    \u201cYet art thou one of God\u2019s own signs for good!\u201d\n    Therewith Mir\u00e8io, trembling where she stood,\n    Was fain to tell why they had sought her thus.\n    \u201cI knew it!\u201d cried the witch, impervious,\n    The brome addressing still, with bended head.\n    \u201cThou poor field-flower! The trampling flock,\u201d she said,\n\n    \u201cBrowse on thy leaves and stems the whole year long;\n    But all the more thou spreadest and art strong,\n    And north and south with verdure deckest yet.\u201d\n    She ceased. A dim light, in a snail-shell set,\n    Danced o\u2019er the dank rock-wall in lurid search:\n    Here hung a sieve; there, on a fork\u00e8d perch,\n\n    Roosted a raven, a white hen beside.\n    Suddenly, as if drunken, rose and cried\n    The witch, \u201cAnd what care I whoe\u2019er you be?\n    Faith walketh blindfold, so doth Charity,\n    Nor from her even tenor wandereth.\n    Say, Valabregan weaver, have you faith?\u201d\n\n    \u201cI have.\u201d Then wildly, their pursuit inviting,\n    Like a she-wolf her flanks with her tail smiting,\n    Darted the hag into a deeper shaft,\n    While the fowl cackled and the raven laughed\n    Before her footsteps; and the boy and maid\n    Followed her through the darkness, sore afraid.\n\n    \u201cStay not!\u201d she cried. \u201cThe time is now to find\n    The mystic mandrake.\u201d And, with hands entwined,\n    Obedient to the voice the two crept on,\n    Through the infernal passage, till they won\n    A grotto larger than the rest. \u201cLo! now,\n    Lord Nostradamus\u2019 plant, the golden bough,\n\n    \u201cThe staff of Joseph and the rod of Moses!\u201d\n    Thus crying, Taven a slender shrub discloses,\n    And, kneeling, with her chaplet crowns. Then said,\n    Arising, \u201cWe too must be garlanded\n    With mandrake;\u201d and the plant in the rock\u2019s cleft\n    Of three fair sprays mysteriously bereft,\n\n    Herself crowned first, and next the wounded man,\n    And last the maid. Then, crying, \u201cForward!\u201d ran\n    Down the weird way, before her footsteps lit\n    By shining beetles trooping over it.\n    Yet turned with a sage word,--\u201cAll paths of glory,\n    My children, have their space of purgatory!\n\n    \u201cTherefore have courage! for we must, alas!\n    The terrors of the Sabatori pass.\u201d\n    And, while she spake, their faces cut they find,\n    And breathing stopped, by rush of keenest wind.\n    \u201cLie down!\u201d she whispered hurriedly,--\u201clie low!\n    The triumph of the Whirlwind Sprites is now!\u201d\n\n    Then fell upon them, like a sudden gale\n    Or white squall on the water fraught with hail,\n    A swarm of whirling, yelping, vicious things,\n    Under the fanning of whose icy wings\n    The mortals, drenched with sweat and struck with cold,\n    Stood shivering. \u201cAway, ye over-bold,\n\n    \u201cYe spoilers of the harvest, unlicked whelps!\u201d\n    Taven exclaimed. \u201cMust we then use such helps\n    To the fair deeds we do? Yet, as by skill\n    The sage physician bringeth good from ill,\n    We witches, by our hidden arts, compel\n    Evil to yield its fruit of good as well.\n\n    \u201cNaught\u2019s hid from us. For where the vulgar see\n    A stone, a whip, a stag, a malady,\n    We witches can the inner force divine\n    Like that which works under the scum of wine\n    In fermentation. Pierce the vat, you know,\n    A seething, boiling scum will outward flow.\n\n    \u201cFind, if you can, the key of Solomon!\n    Or speak unto the mountain in its own\n    Dread language! It shall move at your behest,\n    And roll into the valley ere it rest.\u201d\n    Meanwhile they wended lower, and were \u2019ware\n    Of a small, roguish voice a-piping there,\n\n    Most like a goldfinch: \u201cOur good granny spins,\n    And winds and spins, and then anew begins,\n    And thinks that she spins worsted night and day,\n    And ha! ha! gossip, she spins only hay!\n    Te! he! spin, Aunty, spin!\u201d And long-drawn laughter,\n    Like whinnying of young colts, followed thereafter.\n\n    \u201cWhy, what can that be?\u201d asked Mir\u00e8io,--\n    \u201cThe little voice that laughs and jeers us so?\u201d\n    Again the childish treble came, \u201cTe! he!\n    Who is this pretty mortal? Let us see!\n    We\u2019ll raise the neckerchief a little bit:\n    Are nuts and pomegranates under it?\u201d\n\n    Then the poor maid had nearly cried outright;\n    But the hag stayed her, \u201cHere\u2019s no cause for fright.\n    The singing, jeering thing is but a Glari:\n    Fantasti is his name, a sprightly fairy.\n    In his good mood he will your kitchen sweep,\n    Mind fire, turn roast, and a full hen\u2019s-nest keep.\n\n    \u201cBut what a marplot when he takes the whim!\n    He\u2019ll salt your broth just as it pleaseth him,\n    Or blow your light out ere you\u2019re half in bed!\n    Or, if to vespers you would go,\u201d she said,\n    \u201cAt Saint Trophime, in all your best bedight,\n    He\u2019ll hide your Sunday suit, or spoil it quite!\u201d\n\n    \u201cHear!\u201d shrieked the imp: \u201cnow hear the old hag talk!\n    \u2019Tis like the creak of an ill-greas\u00e8d block!\n    No doubt, my withered olive,\u201d the thing said,\n    \u201cI twitch the bedclothes off a sleeping maid\n    Sometimes at midnight, and she starts with fear\n    And trembles, and her breast heaves. Oh, I see her!\u201d\n\n    And with its whinnying laugh the sprite was gone;\n    Then, for a brief space, as they journeyed on\n    Under the grots, the witcheries were stayed;\n    And in the gloomy silence, long delayed,\n    They heard the water drop from vaulted roof\n    To crystal ground. Now there had sat aloof,\n\n    Upon a ledge of rock, a tall, white thing,\n    Which rose in the half-light as menacing\n    With one long arm. Then stiff as a quartz rock\n    Stood Vincen; while, transported by the shock,\n    Mir\u00e8io would have leaped a precipice,\n    Had such been there. \u201cOld scare-crow, what is this?\n\n    \u201cWhat mean you,\u201d cried Taven, \u201cby swaying so\n    Your limp head like a poplar to and fro?\u201d\n    Then turning to the stricken twain, \u201cMy dears,\n    You know the Laundress? Oft-times she appears\n    On Mount Ventour, and then the common crowd\n    Are wont to take her for a long, white cloud.\n\n    \u201cBut shepherds, when they see her, pen their sheep.\n    The Laundress of destruction, who doth keep\n    The errant clouds in hand, is known too well.\n    She scrubs them with a strength right terrible;\n    Wringing out buckets full of rain, and flame.\n    And neatherds house their cattle at her name;\n\n    \u201cAnd seamen, on the angry, tossing wave,\n    Upon our Lady call, their craft to save.\u201d\n    Here drowned her speech a discord most appalling,\n    Rattling of latches, whimpering, caterwauling,\n    With uncouth words half-uttered intervening,\n    Whereof the devil only knows the meaning;\n\n    And brazen din through all the cave resounding,\n    As one were on a witch-caldron pounding.\n    Then whence those shrieks of laughter, and those wails\n    As of a woman in her pains? Prevails\n    Hardly amid the howl the beldam\u2019s speech,\n    \u201cGive me a hand that I may hold you each,\n\n    \u201cAnd let your magic garlands not be lost!\u201d\n    Here were they jostled from their feet almost\n    By rush of something puffing, grunting, snorting,\n    Most like a herd of ghostly swine comporting.\n    On starlit winter-nights, when Nature slumbers\n    Under her snowy sheets, come forth in numbers\n\n    The fowlers, torch in hand, who bush and tree\n    By river-side will beat right vigorously,\n    Till all the birds at roost arise in haste,\n    And, as by breath of smithy-bellows chased,\n    Affrighted, rush until the net receive:\n    So drave Taven the foul herd with her sieve\n\n    Into the outer darkness. With the same\n    She circles traced, luminous, red as flame,\n    And divers other figures. All the while,\n    \u201cAvaunt!\u201d she cried, \u201cye locusts, ye who spoil\n    The harvest! Quit my sight, or woe betide you!\n    Workers of evil, in your burrows hide you!\n\n    \u201cSince, by the pricking of your flesh, ye know\n    The hills are still with sunshine all aglow,\n    Go hang yourselves again on the rock-angles,\n    Ye bats!\u201d They flit. The clamour disentangles,\n    And dies away. Then to the children spake\n    The witch: \u201cAll birds of night themselves betake\n\n    \u201cTo this retreat what time shines the daylight\n    On the ploughed land and fallow; but at night,--\n    At night the lamps are lighted without hand\n    In churches void and triply fastened, and\n    The bells toll of themselves, and pavement stones\n    Upstart, and tremble all the buried bones,\n\n    \u201cAnd the poor dead arise and kneel to pray,\n    And mass is said by priests as pale as they.\n    Ask the owls else, who clamber down the steeple\n    To drain the lamps of oil; and if the people\n    Who thus partake of the communion\n    Be not all dead except the priests alone!\n\n    \u201cWhat time the beldam jeers at February,\n    Let women everywhere be wondrous wary,\n    Nor fall asleep on chairs for awful reason!\n    Shepherds as well, at yon uncanny season\n    Early your charges fold, and it mislike you\n    A spell should motionless and rigid strike you\n\n    \u201cFor seven years\u2019 time. The Fairies\u2019 Cavern, too,\n    Looses about these days its eerie crew.\n    Winged or four-footed, they o\u2019er Crau disperse;\n    While, from their lairs aroused, the sorcerers\n    Gather, the _farandoulo_ dance, and sup\n    An evil potion from a golden cup.\n\n    \u201cThe dwarf-oaks dance as well. Lord, how they trip it!\n    Meanwhile there\u2019s Garamaude in wait for Gripet.\n    Fie, cruel flirt! Ay, seize the carrion,\n    And claw her bowels out! Now they are gone,--\n    Nay, but they come again! And, oh, despair!\n    The monster stealing through the sea-kale there,\n\n    \u201cThe one who like a burglar crouched and ran,\n    Is Bambarouche, babe-stealing harridan.\n    Her wailing prey in her long claw she takes,\n    Lifts on her horny head, and off she makes.\n    And yon\u2019s another! She\u2019s the Nightmare-sprite\n    Comes down the chimney-flue at dead of night,\n\n    \u201cAnd stealthy climbs upon the sleeper\u2019s breast,\n    Who, as with weight of a tall tower opprest,\n    Hath horrid dreams. Hi! What a hideous racket!\n    My dears, \u2019tis the foul-weather fiends who make it!\n    That sound of rusty hinges, groaning doors,\n    Is they who beat up fog upon the moors,\n\n    \u201cAnd ride the winds that homestead-roofs uptear\n    And bear afar. Ha, Moon! What ails you there?\n    What dire indignity hath made you scowl\n    So red and large o\u2019er Baux? \u2019Ware the dog\u2019s howl!\n    Yon dog can snap you like a cake, be sure!\n    He minds the filthy Demon of the Sewer!\n\n    \u201cNow see the holm-oaks bend their heads like ferns,\n    And see that flame that leaps and writhes and burns.\n    It is St. Elmo\u2019s. And that ringing sound\n    Of rapid hoofs upon the stony ground\n    Is the wild huntsman riding over Crau.\u201d\n    Here hoarse and breathless paused the witch of Baux.\n\n    But straight thereafter, \u201cCover ears and eyes,\n    For the black lamb is bleating!\u201d wildly cries.\n    \u201cThat baaing lambkin!\u201d Vincen dared to say;\n    But she, \u201cHide eyes and ears without delay!\n    Woe to the stumbler here! Sambuco\u2019s Path\n    Less peril than the black horn\u2019s passage hath.\n\n    \u201cTender his bleating, as you hear, and soft:\n    Thereby he lures to their destruction oft\n    The heedless Christians who attend his moan.\n    To them he shows the sheen of Herod\u2019s throne,\n    The gold of Judas, and the fatal spot\n    Where Saracens made fast the golden goat.\n\n    \u201cHer they may milk till death, to hearts\u2019 content.\n    But, when they call for their last sacrament,\n    The black lamb only buts them savagely.\n    And yet, so evil is the time,\u201d quoth she,\n    \u201cUnnumbered greedy souls that bait will seize,\n    Burn incense unto gold, then die as these!\u201d\n\n    Now, while the white hen gave three piercing crows,\n    The eerie guide did to her guests disclose\n    The thirteenth grotto, and the last; and lo!\n    A huge, wide chimney and a hearth aglow,\n    And seven black tom-cats warming round the flame;\n    And, hanging from a hook above the same,\n\n    An iron caldron of gigantic size,\n    And underneath two fire-brands, dragon-wise\n    Belching blue flame. \u201cIs it with these you brew,\n    Grandmother,\u201d asked the lad, \u201cyour magic stew?\u201d\n    \u201cWith these, my son. They\u2019re branches of wild vine:\n    No better logs for burning be than mine.\u201d\n\n    \u201cWell, call them branches if it be your taste;\n    But--but I may not jest. Haste, mother, haste!\u201d\n    Now, midway of the grotto, they descry\n    A large, round table of red porphyry;\n    And, radiating from this wondrous place,\n    Lower than root of oak or mountain base,\n\n    Infinite aisles whose gleaming columns cluster\n    Like pendant icicles in shape and lustre.\n    These are the far-famed galleries of the fays,\n    Here evermore a hazy brightness plays,\n    Temples and shining palaces are here,\n    Majestic porticoes their fronts uprear,\n\n    And many a labyrinth and peristyle\n    The like whereof was never seen erewhile,\n    Even in Corinth or in Babylon.\n    Yet let a fairy breathe, and these are gone!\n    And here, like flickering rays of light, disperse\n    Through he dim walks of this serene Chartreuse,\n\n    The fairies with their knights long since enchanted.\n    Peace to the aisles by their fair presence haunted!\n    And now the witch was ready. First of all,\n    She lifted high her hands, then let them fall,\n    While Vincen had like holy Lawrence lain\n    Upon the porphyry table, mute with pain.\n\n    And mightily the spirit of the crone\n    Appeared to work within her; and as grown\n    She seemed, when, rising to her height anew,\n    She plunged her ladle in the boiling stew\n    That overflowed the caldron in the heat,\n    While all the cats arose and ringed her feet,\n\n    And, with her left hand, unto Vincen\u2019s breast\n    Applied the scalding drops with solemn zest,\n    Gazing intently on him where he lay,\n    Until the cruel hurt was charmed away;\n    And all the while, \u201cThe Lord is born, is dead,\n    Is risen, shall rise again,\u201d she murmur\u00e8d.\n\n    Last on the quivering flesh the cross she made\n    Thrice with her toe-nail; as in forest glade\n    A tigress fiercely claws her fallen prey.\n    And now her speech maketh tumultuous way\n    To where the dim gates of the future are.\n    \u201cYea, he shall rise! I see him now afar\n\n    \u201cAmid the stones and thistles of the hill,\n    His forehead bleeding heavily. And still\n    Over the stones and briers he makes his way,\n    Bowed by his cross. Where is Veronica\n    To wipe the blood? And him of Cyrene\n    To stay him when he fainteth,--where is he?\n\n    \u201cAnd where the weeping Maries, hair dishevelled?\n    All gone! And rich and poor, before him levelled,\n    Gaze while he mounts; and \u2018Who is this,\u2019 one saith,\n    Who climbs with shouldered beam, and never stayeth?\u2019\n    O carnal sons of men! The Cross-bearer\n    Is unto you but as a beaten cur.\n\n    \u201cO cruel Jews! Wherefore so fiercely bite you\n    The hands that feed, and lick the hands that smite you?\n    Receive the fruit of your foul deeds you must.\n    Your precious gems shall crumble into dust,\n    And that you deemed fair pulse or wholesome wheat\n    Shall turn to ashes even while you eat,\n\n    \u201cAnd scare your very hunger. Woe is me!\n    Rivers that foam o\u2019er carrion-heaps I see,\n    And swords and lances in tumultuous motion.\n    Peace to thy stormy waves, thou vex\u00e8d Ocean!\n    Shall Peter\u2019s ancient bark withstand the shock?\n    Alas, it strikes upon the senseless rock!\n\n    \u201cNay, but there cometh One with power to save!\n    Fisher of men, he quells the rebel wave.\n    A fair new bark the Rhone is entering now:\n    She hath God\u2019s cross uplifted on her prow,\n    Rainbow divine! Eternal clemency!\n    Another land, another sun, I see!\n\n    \u201cDance olive-pickers, where the fruit is shining;\n    Drink reapers, on the barley-sheaves reclining!\n    Revealed by signs so many, God,\u201d she said,\n    \u201cIs in his holy temple worshipp\u00e8d.\u201d\n    And, stretching forth her hand, the witch of Baux\n    Pointed the way and bade the children go.\n\n    Light gleamed afar. They haste the ray to follow;\n    They thread their way to the Cordovan Hollow,\n    Where sun and air await them, and they seem\n    To see Mont Majour\u2019s wrecks, as in a dream,\n    Strewn o\u2019er the hill; yet on the sunlit verge\n    Pause for one kiss or ever they emerge.\n\n\n\n\nCANTO VII.\n\n_The Old Men._\n\n\n    Fixing a troubled eye on the old man,\n    Vincen to Master Ambroi thus began,\n    The while a mighty wind, the poplars bending,\n    Its howl unto the poor lad\u2019s voice was lending:\n    \u201cI am mad, father, as I oft of late\n    Have said. Thinkest thou I\u2019m jesting when I say\u2019t?\u201d\n\n    Before his nut-shell cot the Rhone beside\n    Sat Ambroi on a fallen trunk, and plied\n    His trade. And, as he peeled the osier withe,\n    Vincen received it, and, with fingers lithe\n    And strong, bent the white rods to basket form,\n    Sitting upon the door-stone. With the storm\n\n    Of wind was the Rhone\u2019s bosom agitated,\n    The waves drove seaward like a herd belated;\n    But round about the but an azure mere\n    Spread tranquilly. The billows brake not here:\n    A pleasant shelter gave the willow-trees,\n    And beavers gnawed their bitter bark in peace.\n\n    While yonder, through the deep of limpid water,\n    Darted at intervals the dark brown otter,\n    Following the silver-flashing fish. Among\n    The reeds and willows, pendulines had hung\n    Their tiny nests, white woven with the wool\n    Plucked from the poplar when its flowers are full.\n\n    And here the small things fluttered full of glee,\n    Or swang on wind-rocked stems right lazily.\n    Here, too, a sprightly lassie, golden-haired,--\n    Head like a crown-cake!--back and forward fared,\n    And spread on a fig-tree a fishing-net\n    Unwieldy and with water dripping yet.\n\n    Birds, beavers, otters, feared the maid no more\n    Than whispering reeds or willows of the shore.\n    This was the daughter of the basket-weaver,\n    The little Vinceneto. No one ever\n    Had even bored her ears, poor child! yet so\n    Her eyes were damson-blue, her bosom low,--\n\n    A caper-blossom by the river-side,\n    Wooed by the splashing of the amorous tide.\n    But now old Ambroi, with his long white beard\n    Flowing o\u2019er all his breast, his head upreared,\n    And answered Vincen\u2019s outcry: \u201cWhat is\u2019t? Mad?\n    You are a blockhead! that is all, my lad!\u201d\n\n    \u201cAh!\u201d said the other, \u201cfor the ass to stray,\n    Sweet must the mead be. But what do I say?\n    Thou knowest her! If she to Arles should fare,\n    All other maids would hide them in despair;\n    For, after her, I think the mould was broken.\n    And what say to the words herself hath spoken,\n\n    \u201c\u2018You I will have!\u2019\u201d--\u201cWhy, naught, poor fool! say I:\n    Let poverty and riches make reply!\u201d\n    \u201cO father!\u201d Vincen cried, \u201cgo, I implore thee,\n    To Lotus Farm, and tell them all the story!\n    Tell them to look for virtue, not for gain!\n    Tell them that I can plough a stony plain,\n\n    \u201cOr harrow, or prune vines with any man!\n    Tell them their six yoke, with my guiding, can\n    Plough double! Tell them I revere the old;\n    And, if they part us for the sake of gold,\n    We shall both die, and they may bury us!\u201d\n    \u201cOh, fie! But you are young who maunder thus,\u201d\n\n    Quoth Master Ambroi. \u201cAll this talk I know.\n    The white hen\u2019s egg, the chaffinch on the bough,\n    You\u2019ll have the pretty bird this very minute!\n    Whistle, bring sugared cake, or die to win it;\n    Yet will the chaffinch never come, be sure,\n    And perch upon your finger! You are poor!\u201d\n\n    \u201cPlague on my poverty!\u201d poor Vincen cried,\n    Tearing his hair. \u201cIs God who hath denied\n    All that could make life worthy,--is He just?\n    And wherefore are we poor? And wherefore must\n    We still the refuse of the vineyard gather,\n    While others pluck the purple clusters rather?\u201d\n\n    Lifting his hands, the old man sternly said,\n    \u201cWeave on, and drive this folly from your head!\n    Shall the corn-ears rebuke the reaper, pray?\n    Or silly worm to God the Father say,\n    \u2018Why am I not a star in heaven to shine?\u2019\n    Or shall the ox to be a drover pine,\n\n    \u201cSo to eat corn instead of straw? Nay, nay!\n    Through good and ill we all must hold our way.\n    The hand\u2019s five fingers were unequal made.\n    Be you a lizard, as your Master bade,\n    And dwell content upon your wall apart,\n    And drink your sunbeam with a thankful heart!\u201d\n\n    \u201cI tell thee, father, I this maid adore\n    More than my sister, than my Maker more;\n    And if I have her not, \u2019tis death, I say!\u201d\n    Then to the rough stream Vincen fled away;\n    While little Vinceneto burst out weeping,\n    Let fall her net, and near the weaver creeping,--\n\n    \u201cO father! ere thou drive my brother wild,\n    Listen to me!\u201d began the eager child:\n    \u201cFor where I served the master had a daughter;\n    And had a labourer, too, who loved and sought her,\n    Just as our Vincen loves Mir\u00e8io.\n    She was named Alis; he, Siv\u00e8stre: and so\n\n    \u201cHe laboured like a wolf because he loved.\n    Skilful and prompt, quiet and saving proved,\n    And took such care, master slept tranquilly;\n    But once--mark, father, how perverse men be!--\n    One morning master\u2019s wife, as it befell,\n    O\u2019erheard Siv\u00e8stre his love to Alis tell.\n\n    \u201cSo when at dinner all the men were sitting,\n    The master gave Siv\u00e8stre a wrathful greeting.\n    \u2018Traitor!\u2019 he cried, with his eyes all aglow,\n    \u2018You are discovered! Take your wage, and go!\u2019\n    We looked at one another in dismay,\n    As the good servant rose, and went his way.\n\n    \u201cThereafter, for three weeks, when we were working,\n    We used to see him round the farmstead lurking,--\n    A sorry sight; for all his clothes were torn,\n    And his face very pale and wild and worn.\n    And oft at eve he to the trellis came,\n    And called the little mistress by her name.\n\n    \u201cErelong the hay-rick at its corners four\n    Burnt all a-flame. And, father, something more!\n    They drew a drown\u00e8d man out of the well.\u201d\n    Then Ambroi, in gruff tones half-audible,\n    \u201cA little child a little trouble gives,\n    And more and more for every year he lives.\u201d\n\n    Therewith put his long spatterdashes on\n    Which he himself had made in days bygone,\n    His hobnailed shoes, and long red cap, and so\n    Straightway set forth upon the road to Crau.\n    \u2019Twas harvest-time, the eve of St. John\u2019s day,\n    The hedgerow paths were crowded all the way\n\n    With troops of dusty, sunburnt mountaineers\n    Hired for the reaping of the golden ears.\n    In fig-wood quivers were their sickles borne,\n    Slung to a belt across the shoulder worn.\n    By twos and twos they came, and every pair\n    Had its own sheaf-binder. And carts were there,\n\n    Bearing the weary elders, and beside\n    The pipes and tambourines with ribbons tied.\n    Anon by fields of beardless wheat they passed,\n    Lashed into billows by the noisy blast;\n    And \u201cMon Dieu, but that is noble grain!\u201d\n    They cried. \u201cWhat tufts of ears! There shall we gain\n\n    \u201cRight pleasant reaping! The wind bows them over;\n    But see you not how quickly they recover?\n    Is all the wheat-crop of Provence thus cheering,\n    Grandfather?\u201d asked a youth, old Ambroi nearing.\n    \u201cThe red is backward still,\u201d he made reply;\n    \u201cBut, if this windy weather last, deem I\n\n    \u201cSickles will fail us ere the work be done.\n    How like three stars the Christmas candles shone!\n    That was a blessed sign of a good year!\u201d\n    \u201cNow, grandfather, may the good God thee hear,\n    And in thy granary the same fulfil!\u201d\n    So Ambroi and the reapers chatted still\n\n    In friendly wise, under the willows wending;\n    For these as well to Lotus Farm were tending.\n    It also chanced that Master Ramoun went\n    That eve to hearken for the wheat\u2019s complaint\n    Against the wind, wild waster of the grain;\n    And, as he strode over the yellow plain\n\n    From north to south, he heard the golden corn\n    Murmuring, \u201cSee the ills that we have borne,\n    Master, from this great gale. It spills our seed\n    And blurs our bloom!\u201d--\u201cPut on your gloves of reed,\u201d\n    Sang others, \u201celse the ants will be more fleet,\n    And rob us of our all but hardened wheat.\n\n    \u201cWhen will the sickles come?\u201d And Ramoun turned\n    Toward the trees, and even then discerned\n    The reapers rising in the distance dim;\n    Who, as they nearer drew, saluted him\n    With waving sickles flashing in the sun.\n    Then roared the master, \u201cWelcome, every one!\n\n    \u201cA very God-send!\u201d cried he, loud and long;\n    And soon the sheaf-binders about him throng,\n    Saying, \u201cShake hands! Why, Holy Cross, look here!\n    What heaps of sheaves, good master, will this year\n    Cumber your treading-floor!\u201d--\u201cMayhap,\u201d said he:\n    \u201cWe cannot alway judge by what we see.\n\n    \u201cTill all is trod, the truth will not be known.\n    I have known years that promised,\u201d he went on,\n    \u201cEighty full bushels to the acre fairly,\n    And yielded in their stead a dozen barely.\n    Yet let us be content!\u201d And, with a smile,\n    He shook their hands all round in friendly style,\n\n    And gossiped with old Ambroi affably.\n    So entered all the homestead path, and he\n    Called out once more, \u201cCome forth, Mir\u00e8io mine:\n    Prepare the chiccory and draw the wine!\u201d\n    And she right lavishly the table spread;\n    While Ramoun first him seated at its head,\n\n    And the rest in their order, for the lunch.\n    Forthwith the labourers began to crunch\n    Hard-crusted bread their sturdy teeth between,\n    And hail the salad made of goats-beard green;\n    While fair as an oat-leaf the table shone,\n    And in superb profusion heaped thereon\n\n    Were odorous cheese, onions and garlic hot,\n    Grilled egg-plant, fiery peppers, and what not,\n    To sting the palate. Master Ramoun poured\n    The wine, king in the field and at the board;\n    Raising his mighty flagon now and then,\n    And calling for a bumper on the men.\n\n    \u201cTo keep the sickles keen on stony ground,\n    They must be often whetted, I have found.\u201d\n    The reapers held their goblets, bidden so,\n    And red and clear the wine began to flow.\n    \u201cAy, whet the blades!\u201d the cheery master cries;\n    And furthermore gives order in this wise:\n\n    \u201cNow eat your fill, and all your strength restore.\n    But go thereafter, as you used of yore,\n    And branches in the copse-wood cut, and bring\n    In fagots; thus a great heap gathering.\n    And when \u2019tis night, my lads, we\u2019ll do the rest!\n    For this the f\u00eate is of Saint John the blest,--\n\n    \u201cSaint John the reaper, and the friend of God.\u201d\n    So spake the lord of all these acres broad.\n    The high and noble art of husbandry,\n    The rule of men, none better knew than he,\n    Or how to make a golden harvest grow\n    From dark sods moistened by the toiler\u2019s brow.\n\n    A grave and simple master of the soil,\n    Whose frame was bending now with years and toil;\n    Yet oft, of old, when floors were full of wheat,\n    Glowing with pride he had performed the feat,\n    Before his youthful corps, upright to stand\n    Bearing two pecks upon each horny hand.\n\n    He could the influence of the moon rehearse;\n    Tell when her look is friendly, when adverse;\n    When she will raise the sap, and when depress;\n    The coming weather from her halo guess,\n    And from her silver-pale or fiery face.\n    Clear signs to him were birds and keen March days,\n\n    And mouldy bread and noisome August fogs,\n    St. Clara\u2019s dawn, the rainbow-hued sun-dogs,\n    Wet seasons, times of drought and frost and plenty.\n    Full oft, in pleasant years, a-ploughing went he,\n    With six fair, handsome beasts. And, verily,\n    Myself have seen, and it was good to see,\n\n    The soil part silently before the share,\n    And its dark bosom to the sun lay bare:\n    The comely mules, ne\u2019er from the furrow breaking,\n    Toiled on as though they care and thought were taking\n    For what they did. With muzzles low they went,\n    And arching necks like bows when these are bent,\n\n    And hasted not, nor lagged. Followed along--\n    Eye on the mules, and on his lips a song--\n    The ploughman, with one handle only guiding.\n    So, in the realm where we have seen presiding\n    Our old friend Ramoun, flourished every thing,\n    And he bare sceptre like a very king.\n\n    Now says he grace, and lifts his eyes above,\n    And signs the holy cross. The labourers move\n    Away to make the bonfire ready. These\n    Bring kindling; those, the boughs of dark pine-trees;\n    And the old men alone at table staying,\n    A silence fell. But Ambroi brake it, saying,--\n\n    \u201cFor counsel, Ramoun, am I come to thee;\n    For I am in a great perplexity\n    Thou only canst resolve. Cure see I none.\n    Thou knowest, Master, that I have a son\n    Who has been passing good until this day,--\n    It were ingratitude aught else to say;\n\n    \u201cBut there are flaws even in precious stones,\n    And tender lambs will have convulsions,\n    And the still waters are perfidious ever:\n    So my mad boy,--thou wilt believe it never,--\n    He loves the daughter of a rich freeholder,\n    And swears he will in his embrace enfold her!\n\n    \u201cAy, swears he will, the maniac! And his love\n    And his despair my soul to terror move.\n    I showed him all his folly, be thou sure,\n    And how wealth gains, and poverty grows poor\n    In this hard world. In vain! He would but call,\n    \u2018Cost what it may, tell thou her parents all,--\n\n    \u201c\u2018Tell them to look for virtue, not for gain!\n    Tell them that I can plough a stony plain,\n    Or harrow, or prune vines with any man!\n    Tell them their six yoke, with my guiding, can\n    Plough double! Tell them I revere the old;\n    And, if they part us for the sake of gold,\n\n    \u201c\u2018We shall both die, and need but burial.\u2019\n    Now, Master Ramoun, I have told thee all.\n    Shall I, clad in my rags, for this maid sue,\n    Or leave my son to die of sorrow?\u201d--\u201cWhew!\u201d\n    The other. \u201cTo such wind spread thou no sail!\n    Nor he, nor she, will perish of this ail.\n\n    \u201cSo much, good friend, I say in utmost faith.\n    Nor would I, Ambroi, fret myself to death\n    If I were thou; but, seeing him so mad,\n    I would say plainly, \u2018Calm your mind, my lad!\n    For if you raise a tempest by your passions,\n    I\u2019ll teach you with a cudgel better fashions!\u2019\n\n    \u201cIf an ass, Ambroi, for more fodder bray,\n    Throw him none down, but let thy bludgeon play.\n    Proven\u00e7al families in days bygone\n    Were healthy, brave, and evermore at one,\n    And strong as plane-trees when a storm befell.\n    They had their strifes, indeed,--we know it well;\n\n    \u201cBut, when returned the holy Christmas eve,\n    The grandsire all his children would receive\n    At his own board, under a star-sown tent;\n    And ceased the voice of strife and all dissent,\n    When, lifting hands that wrinkled were and trembled,\n    He blessed the generations there assembled.\n\n    \u201cMoreover, he who is a father truly\n    Will have his child yield him obedience duly:\n    The flock that drives the shepherd, soon or late,\n    Will meet a wolf and a disastrous fate.\n    When we were young, had any son withstood\n    His father, he, belike, had shed his blood!\u201d\n\n    \u201cThou wilt kill me then, father! It is I\n    Whom Vincen worships thus despairingly;\n    And before God and our most holy Mother,\n    I give my soul to him, and to no other!\u201d\n    A deathlike hush followed Mir\u00e8io\u2019s word.\n    The wife of Ramoun was the first who stirred.\n\n    Upspringing with clasped hands and utterance wild,\n    \u201cYour speech is an atrocious insult, child!\n    Your love\u2019s a thorn that long hath stung us deep.\n    Alari, the owner of a thousand sheep,\n    You sent away; and keeper Veran too,\n    Disgusted with your scorn, his suit withdrew;\n\n    \u201cAlso the wealthy herdsman, Ourrias,\n    You treated as a dog and a scapegrace!\n    Tramp through the country with your beggar, then!\n    Herd with strange women and with outcast men!\n    And cook your pot with fortune-telling crones\n    Under a bridge mayhap, upon three stones.\n\n    \u201cGo, gypsy, you are free!\u201d the mother said;\n    Nor stayed Ramoun her pitiless tirade,\n    Though his eye like a taper burned. But now\n    The lightning flashed under his shaggy brow,\n    And his wrath brake, all barriers overbearing,\n    Like swollen torrent down a mountain tearing.\n\n    \u201cYour mother\u2019s right!\u201d he said. \u201cGo! travel yonder,\n    And take the tempest with you where you wander!\n    Nay, but you shall not! Here you shall remain,\n    Though I should bind you with an iron chain,\n    Or hold like a rebellious jumart, look!\n    Dragged by the nostrils with an iron hook!\n\n    \u201cYea, though you pine with sickly melancholy,\n    Till from your cheeks the roses perish wholly,\n    Or fade as snow fades when the sun is hot\n    On the hill-sides in spring, go shall you not!\n    And mark, Mir\u00e8io! Sure as the hearth\u2019s ashes\n    Rest on that brick, and sure as the Rhone dashes\n\n    \u201cAbove its banks when it is overfull,\n    And sure as that\u2019s a lamp, and here I rule,\n    You\u2019ll see him never more!\u201d The table leapt\n    Beneath his fist. Mir\u00e8io only wept.\n    Her heavy tears like dew on smallage rain,\n    Or grapes o\u2019er ripe before a hurricane.\n\n    \u201cAnd who,\u201d resumed the old man, blind with rage,--\n    \u201cCurse it!--I say, who, Ambroi, will engage\n    Thou didst not with the younger ruffian plot\n    This vile abduction, yonder in thy cot?\u201d\n    Then Ambroi also sprang infuriate,--\n    \u201cGood God!\u201d he cried, \u201cwe are of low estate;\n\n    \u201cBut let me tell you that our hearts are high!\n    No shame, no stain, is honest poverty!\n    I\u2019ve served my country forty years or more\n    On shipboard, and I know the cannon\u2019s roar,\n    So young that I could scarce a boat-hook swing\n    When on my first cruise I went wandering.\n\n    \u201cI\u2019ve seen Melinda\u2019s empire far away,\n    And with Suffren have haunted India,\n    And done my duty over all the world\n    In the great wars, where\u2019er our flag unfurled\n    That southern chief who passed his conquering hand\n    With one red sweep from Spain to Russian land,\n\n    \u201cAnd at whose drum-beat every clime was quaking\n    Like aspen-tree before the tempest shaking;\n    Horrors of boarding, shipwreck\u2019s agonies,--\n    These have I known, and darker things than these,\n    Days than the sea more bitter. Being poor,\n    No bit of motherland might I secure.\n\n    \u201cScorned of the rich, I might not dress the sward,\n    But suffer forty years without reward.\n    We ate dog\u2019s food, on the hoar-frost we lay:\n    Weary of life, we rushed into the fray,\n    And so upbore the glorious name of France.\n    But no one holds it in remembrance!\u201d\n\n    His caddis-cloak upon the ground he threw,\n    And spake no more. \u201cWhat great thing wilt thou do?\u201d\n    Asked Ramoun, and his tone was full of scorn.\n    \u201cI, too, have heard the cannon-thunder borne\n    Along the valley of Toulon, have seen\n    The bridge of Arcole stormed, and I have been\n\n    \u201cIn Egypt when her sands were red with gore;\n    But we, like men, when those great wars were o\u2019er,\n    Returning, fiercely fell upon the soil,\n    And dried our very marrow up with toil\n    The day began long ere the eastern glow,\n    The rising moon surprised us at the hoe.\n\n    \u201cThey say the Earth is generous. It is true!\n    But, like a nut-tree, naught she gives to you\n    Unless well-beaten. And if all were known,\n    Each clod of landed ease thus hardly won,\n    He who should number them would also know\n    The sweat-drops that have fallen from my brow.\n\n    \u201cAnd must I, by Ste. Anne of Apt, be still?\n    Like satyr toil, of siftings eat my fill,\n    That all the homestead may grow wealthy, and\n    Myself before the world with honour stand,\n    Yet go and give my daughter to a tramp,\n    A vagabond, a straw-loft-sleeping scamp?\n\n    \u201cGod\u2019s thunder strike you and your dog! Begone!\n    But I,\u201d the master said, \u201cwill keep my swan.\u201d\n    These were his last rough words; and steadily\n    Ambroi arose, and his cloak lifted he,\n    And only rested on his staff to say,\n    \u201cAdieu! Mayst thou not regret this day!\n\n    \u201cAnd may the good God and his angels guide\n    The orange-laden bark across the tide!\u201d\n    Then, as he passed into the falling night,\n    From the branch-heap arose a ruddy light,\n    And one long tongue of flame the wanderer sees,\n    Curled like a horn by the careering breeze;\n\n    And round it reapers dancing blithesomely,\n    With pulsing feet, and haughty heads and free\n    Thrown back, and faces by the bonfire lit,\n    Loud crackling as the night-wind fanneth it.\n    The sound of coals that to the brazier fall\n    Blends with the fife-notes fine but musical,\n\n    And merry as the song of the hedge-sparrow.\n    Ah, but it thrills the old Earth to her marrow\n    When thou dost visit her, beloved St. John!\n    The sparks went whirling upward, and hummed on\n    The tabor gravely and incessantly,\n    Like the low surging of a tranquil sea.\n\n    Then did the dusky troop their sickle wave,\n    And three great leaps athwart the flame they gave,\n    And cloves of odorous garlic from a string\n    Upon the glowing embers they did fling,\n    And holy herb and John\u2019s-wort bare anigh;\n    And these were purified and blessed thereby.\n\n    Then \u201cHail, St. John!\u201d thrice rose a deafening shout;\n    And hills and plain, illumined round about,\n    Sparkled as though the dark were showering stars.\n    And sure the Saint, above the heaven\u2019s blue bars,\n    The breath of all this incense doth inhale,\n    Wafted aloft by the unconscious gale.\n\n\n\n\nCANTO VIII.\n\n_La Crau._\n\n\n              The rage of the mighty lioness\n              Who shall restrain?\n    She came to her den, and she found it bare:\n    A Moorish huntsman had entered there.\n    The huntsman came, and the whelp is gone.\n    Away through the canebrake they have flown,\n    Galloping far at a headlong pace.\n              To follow--vain!\n    She roars awhile in her deep despite,\n    Then rises and courses, lank and light,\n    Over the hills of Barbary.\n    As a maid bereft of her love is she.\n\n    Mir\u00e8io lay upon her little bed,\n    Clasping in both her hands her burning head.\n    Dim was the chamber; for the stars alone\n    Saw the maid weep, and heard her piteous moan,--\n    \u201cHelp, Mother Mary, in my sore distress!\n    Oh, cruel fate! Oh, father pitiless,\n\n    \u201cWho tread me underfoot! Could you but see\n    My heart\u2019s mad tumult, you would pity me!\n    You used to call me darling long ago,\n    And now you bend me to the yoke as though\n    I were a vicious colt that you were fain\n    To break. Why does the sea not flood this plain?\n\n    \u201cI would the wealthy lands that make me weep\n    Were hid for evermore in the great deep!\n    Ah, had I in a serpent\u2019s hole been born,\n    Of some poor vagrant, I were less forlorn!\n    For then if any lad, my Vincen even,\n    Had asked my hand, mayhap it had been given.\n\n    \u201cO Vincen, who so handsome are and true!\n    If only they would let me go to you,\n    I\u2019d cling as clings the tender ivy-vine\n    Unto the oak: I would not ever pine\n    For food, but life in your caresses find,\n    And drink at wayside pools with happy mind.\u201d\n\n    So on her pallet the sweet maid lay sobbing,\n    Fire in her heart and every vein a-throbbing,\n    And all the happy time remembering--\n    Oh, calm and happy!--of her love\u2019s fair spring,\n    Until a word in Vincen\u2019s very tone\n    Comes to her memory. \u201c\u2019Twas you, my own,--\n\n    \u201c\u2019Twas you,\u201d she cried, \u201ccame one day to the farm,\n    And said, \u2018If ever thou dost come to harm,--\n    If any lizard, wolf, or poisonous snake,\n    Ever should wound thee with its fang,--betake\n    Thyself forthwith to the most holy Saints,\n    Who cure all ills and hearken all complaints.\u2019\n\n    \u201cAnd sure I am in trouble now,\u201d she said:\n    \u201cTherefore we\u2019ll go, and come back comforted.\u201d\n    Then lightly from her white cot glided she,\n    And straightway opened, with a shining key,\n    The wardrobe where her own possessions lay:\n    It was of walnut wood, and carven gay.\n\n    Here were her childhood\u2019s little treasures all:\n    Here sacredly she kept the coronal\n    Worn at her first communion; and thereby\n    A faded sprig of lavender and dry,\n    And a wax taper almost burned, as well,\n    Once blessed, the distant thunder to dispel.\n\n    A smart red petticoat she first prepares,\n    Which she herself had quilted into squares,--\n    Of needlework a very masterpiece;\n    And round her slender waist she fastens this;\n    And over it another, finer one\n    She draws; and next doth a black bodice don,\n\n    And fasten firmly with a pin of gold.\n    On her white shoulders, her long hair unrolled,\n    Curling, and loose like a dark garment, lay,\n    Which, gathering up, she swiftly coils away\n    Under a cap of fine, transparent lace;\n    Then decks the veil\u00e8d tresses with all grace,\n\n    Thrice with a ribbon blue encircling them,--\n    The fair young brow\u2019s Arlesian diadem.\n    Lastly, she adds an apron to the rest,\n    And folds a muslin kerchief o\u2019er her breast.\n    In her dire haste, alone, the child forgat\n    The shallow-crowned, broad-brimmed Proven\u00e7al hat,\n\n    That might have screened her from the mortal heat.\n    But, so arrayed, crept forth on soundless feet\n    Adown the wooden staircase, in her hand\n    Her shoes, undid the heavy door-bar, and\n    Her soul unto the watchful saints commended,\n    As away like a wind of night she wended.\n\n    It was the hour when constellations keep\n    Their friendly watch o\u2019er followers of the deep.\n    The eye of St. John\u2019s eagle flashed afar,\n    As it alighted on a burning star,\n    One of the three where the evangelist\n    Hath his alternate dwelling. Cloud nor mist\n\n    Defaced the dark serene of star-lit sky;\n    But the great chariot of souls went by\n    On wing\u00e8d wheels along the heavenly road,\n    Bearing away from earth its blessed load.\n    Far up the shining steeps of Paradise,\n    The circling hills behold it as it flies.\n\n    Mir\u00e8io hasted no less anxiously\n    Than Magalouno in the days gone by,\n    Who searched the wood with sad, inquiring glance\n    For her lost lover, P\u00e8ire of Provence,\n    When cruel waves divorced him from her side,\n    And left her lone and wretched. Soon espied\n\n    The maid, upon the boundary of the lea,\n    Folds where her sire\u2019s own shepherds could she see\n    Already milking. Some the sheep compelled,\n    Against the pen-side by the muzzle held,\n    To suckle quietly their tawny lambs.\n    Always arose the bleat of certain dams;\n\n    While other childless ones the shepherds guide\n    Toward the milker. On a stone astride,\n    Mute as the very night, sits he, and dim;\n    While, pressed from swollen udders, a long stream\n    Of warm fine milk into the pail goes leaping,\n    The white froth high about its border creeping.\n\n    The sheep-dogs all in tranquil slumber lay.\n    The fine, large dogs--as white as lilies they--\n    Stretched round the enclosure, muzzles deep in thyme.\n    And peace was everywhere, and summer clime;\n    And o\u2019er the balmy country, far and near,\n    Brooded a heaven full of stars, and clear.\n\n    So in the stillness doth Mir\u00e8io dash\n    Along the hurdles, like a lightning flash,\n    Lifting a wailing cry that never varies,--\n    \u201cWill none go with me to the holy Maries,\n    Of all the shepherds?\u201d They and the sheep hear it,\n    And see the maiden flitting like a spirit,\n\n    And huddle up, and bow their heads, as though\n    Smit by a sudden gale. The farm-dogs know\n    Her voice, but never stir her flight to stay.\n    And now is she already far away,\n    Threads the dwarf-oaks, and like a partridge rushes\n    Over the holly and the camphyre bushes,\n\n    Her feet scarce touching earth. And now she passes\n    Curlews in flocks asleep amid the grasses\n    Under the oaks, who, roused from slumber soft,\n    Arise in haste, and wing their flight aloft\n    Over the sad and barren plain; and all\n    Together \u201cCour\u2019li! cour\u2019li! cour\u2019li!\u201d call,\n\n    Until the Dawn, with her dew-glittering tresses,\n    From mountain-top to level slow progresses,\n    Sweetly saluted by the tufted lark,\n    Soaring and singing o\u2019er the caverns dark\n    In the great hills, whose pinnacles each one\n    Appear to sway before the rising sun.\n\n    Then was revealed La Crau, the bare, the waste,\n    The rough with stones, the ancient, and the vast,\n    Whose proud old giants, if the tale be true,\n    Once dreamed, poor fools, the Almighty to subdue\n    With but a ladder and their shoulders brave;\n    But He them \u2019whelmed in a destroying wave.\n\n    Already had the rebels dispossest\n    The Mount of Victory of his tall crest,\n    Lifted with lever from its place; and sure\n    They would have helped it high upon Ventour,\n    As they had piled the rugged escarpment\n    They from the Alpine range had earlier rent.\n\n    But God his hand extended o\u2019er the plain:\n    The north-west wind, thunder, and hurricane\n    He loosed; and these arose like eagles three\n    From mountain clefts and caverns and the sea,\n    Wrapped in thick fog, with fury terrible,\n    And on the marble pile together fell.\n\n    Then were the rude Colossi overthrown;\n    And a dense covering of pudding-stone\n    Spread o\u2019er La Crau, the desolate, the vast,\n    The mute, the bare to every stormy blast;\n    Who wears the hideous garment to this day.\n    Meanwhile Mir\u00e8io farther speeds away\n\n    From the home-lands, while the sun\u2019s ardent glare\n    Makes visible all round the shimmering air;\n    And shrill cicalas, grilling in the grass,\n    Beat madly evermore their tiny brass.\n    Nor tree for shade was there, nor any beast:\n    The many flocks, that in the winter feast.\n\n    On the short, savoury grasses of the moor,\n    Had climbed the Alps, where airs are cool and pure,\n    And pastures fadeless. Yet the maid doth fly\n    Under the pouring fire of a June sky,--\n    Fly, fly, like lightning. Lizards large and gray\n    Peep from their holes, and to each other say,\n\n    \u201cShe must be mad who thus the shingle clears,\n    Under a heat that sets the junipers\n    A-dancing on the hills; on Crau, the sands.\u201d\n    The praying mantes lift beseeching hands,\n    \u201cReturn, return, O pilgrim!\u201d murmuring,\n    \u201cFor God hath opened many a crystal spring;\n\n    \u201cAnd shady trees hath planted, so the rose\n    To save upon your cheeks. Why, then, expose\n    Your brow to the unpitying summer heat?\n    Vainly as well the butterflies entreat.\n    For her the wings of love, the wind of faith,\n    Bear on together, as the tempest\u2019s breath\n\n    White gulls astray over the briny plains\n    Of Agui-Morto. Utter sadness reigns\n    In scattered sheep-cots of their tenants left,\n    And overrun with salicorne. Bereft\n    In the hot desert, seemed the maid to wake,\n    And see nor spring nor pool her thirst to slake,\n\n    And slightly shuddered. \u201cGreat St. Gent!\u201d she cried,\n    \u201cO hermit of the Bausset mountain-side!\n    O fair young labourer, who to thy plough\n    Didst harness the fierce mountain-wolf ere now,\n    And in the flinty rock, recluse divine,\n    Didst open springs of water and of wine,\n\n    \u201cAnd so revive thy mother, perishing\n    Of heat! like me, when they were slumbering,\n    Thou didst forsake thy household, and didst fare\n    Alone with God through mountain-passes, where\n    Thy mother found thee! For me, too, dear Saint,\n    Open a spring; for I am very faint,\n\n    \u201cAnd my feet by the hot stones blister\u00e8d!\u201d\n    Then, in high heaven, heard what Mir\u00e8io said\n    The good St. Gent: and soon she doth discover\n    A well far off, with a bright stone laid over;\n    And, like a marten through a shower of rain,\n    Speeds through the flaming sun-rays, this to gain.\n\n    The well was old, with ivy overrun--\n    A watering-place for flocks; and from the sun\n    Scarce by it sheltered sat a little boy,\n    With basket-full of small white snails for toy.\n    With his brown hands, he one by one withdrew them,\n    The tiny harvest-snails; and then sang to them,--\n\n            \u201cSnaily, snaily, little nun,\n        Come out of the cell, come into the sun!\n        Show me your horns without delay,\n        Or I\u2019ll tear your convent-walls away.\u201d\n\n    Then the fair maid of Crau, when she had dipped\n    Her burning lips into the pail, and sipped,\n    Quickly upraised a lovely, rosy face,\n    And, \u201cLittle one! what dost thou here?\u201d she says.\n    A pause. \u201cPick snailies from the stones and grass?\u201d\n    \u201cThou hast guessed right!\u201d the urchin\u2019s answer was.\n\n    \u201cHere in my basket have I--see, how many!\n    Nuns, harvest-snails, and these, as good as any!\u201d\n    \u201cAnd thou dost eat them\u201d--\u201cNay, not I,\u201d replied he;\n    \u201cBut mother carries them to Arles on Friday,\n    And sells them; and brings back nice, tender bread.\n    Thou wilt have been to Arles?\u201d--\u201cNever!\u201d she said.\n\n    \u201cWhat, never been to Arles! But I\u2019ve been there!\n    Ah, poor young lady! Couldst thou see how fair\n    And large a city that same Arles is grown!\n    She covers all the seven mouths of the Rhone.\n    Upon the islands of the great salt-mere\n    Her cattle graze: wild horses doth she rear.\n\n    \u201cAnd in one summer, corn enough doth grow,\n    To feed her seven full years, if need were so.\n    She\u2019s fishermen who fish on every sea,--\n    Seamen who front the storms right valiantly\n    Of distant waters.\u201d Thus with pretty pride\n    The boy his sunny country glorified,\n\n    In golden speech;--her blue and heaving ocean;\n    Her Mont Majour, that keeps the mills in motion,--\n    These with soft olives ever feeding fully;\n    Her bitterns in the marshes booming dully.\n    One thing alone, thou lovely, dusky town,\n    The child forgat,--of all thy charms the crown;\n\n    He said not, fruitful Arles, that thy fine air\n    Gives to thy daughters beauty rich and rare,\n    As grapes to autumn, or as wings to bird,\n    Or fragrance to the hill-sides. Him had heard\n    The country maiden, sadly, absently.\n    But now, \u201cBright boy, wilt thou not go with me?\u201d\n\n    She said; \u201cfor, ere the frogs croak in the willow,\n    My foot must planted be beyond the billow.\n    Come with me! I must o\u2019er the Rhone be rowed,\n    And left there in the keeping of my God!\u201d\n    \u201cNow, then,\u201d the urchin cried, \u201cthou poor, dear lady,\n    Thou art in luck! for we are fishers,\u201d said he;\n\n    \u201cAnd thou shalt sleep under our tent this night,\n    Pitched in the shadow of the poplars white,\n    So keeping all thy pretty clothing on;\n    And father, with the earliest ray of dawn,\n    In our own little boat will put thee o\u2019er!\u201d\n    But she, \u201cDo not detain me, I implore:\n\n    \u201cI am yet strong enough this night to wander.\u201d\n    \u201cNow God forbid!\u201d was the lad\u2019s prompt rejoinder:\n    \u201cWouldst thou see, then, the crowd of sorry shapes\n    From the Trau-de-la-Capo that escapes?\n    For if they meet thee, be thou sure of this,--\n    They\u2019ll drag thee with them into the abyss!\u201d\n\n    \u201cTrau-de-la-Capo! What may that be, pray?\u201d\n    \u201cI\u2019ll tell thee, lady, as we pick our way\n    Over the stones.\u201d And forthwith he began:\n    \u201cOnce was a treading-floor that overran\n    With wealth of sheaves. To-morrow, on thy ways,\n    Thou\u2019lt pass, upon the riverside, the place.\n\n    \u201cTrod by a circle of Camargan steeds,\n    The tall sheaves have been yielding up their seeds\n    To the incessant hoofs, a month or more.\n    No pause, no rest; and, on the treading-floor,\n    Dusty and winding, still the eye perceives\n    A very mountain of untrodden sheaves.\n\n    \u201cAlso, the weather was so fiercely hot,\n    The floor would burn like fire; and rested not\n    The wooden forks that more sheaves yet supplied\n    While at the horses\u2019 muzzles there were shied\n    Clusters of bearded ears unceasingly,--\n    They flew as arrows from the cross-bow fly.\n\n    \u201cAnd on St. Peter\u2019s day and on St. Charles\u2019\n    Rang, and rang vainly, all the bells of Arles:\n    There was no Sunday and no holiday\n    For the unhappy horses: but alway\n    The heavy tramp around the weary road,\n    Alway the pricking of the keeper\u2019s goad,\n\n    \u201cAlway the orders issued huskily,\n    As in the fiery whirlwind still stood he.\n    The greedy master of the treaders white\n    Had even muzzled them, in his despite.\n    And, when Our Lady\u2019s day in August came,\n    The coupled beasts were treading, all the same,\n\n    \u201cThe pil\u00e8d sheaves, foam-drenched. Their livers clung\n    Fast to their ribs, and their jaws drivelling hung,\n    When suddenly an icy, northern gale\n    Smit, swept the floor,--and God\u2019s blasphemers pale.\n    It quakes! It parts! On a black caldron\u2019s brink\n    Now stand they, and their eyes with horror sink.\n\n    \u201cThen the sheaves whirl with fury terrible.\n    Pitch-forkers, keepers, keepers-aids as well,\n    Struggle to save them; but they naught can do:\n    The van, the van-goats, and the mill-stones too,\n    Horses and drivers, treading-floor, and master\n    Are swallowed up in one immense disaster!\u201d\n\n    \u201cYou make me shudder!\u201d poor Mir\u00e8io said.\n    \u201cAh, but that is not all, my pretty maid!\n    Thou thinkest me a little mad, may be:\n    But on the morrow thou the spot wilt see;\n    And carp and tench in the blue water playing,\n    And, in the reeds, marsh-blackbirds roundelaying.\n\n    \u201cBut on Our Lady\u2019s day, when mounts again\n    The fire-crowned sun to the meridian,\n    Lay thee down softly, ear to earth,\u201d said he,\n    \u201cAnd eye a-watch, and presently thou\u2019lt see\n    The gulf, at first so limpid, will begin\n    To darken with the shadow of the sin;\n\n    \u201cAnd slowly up from the unquiet deep\n    A murmuring sound, like buzzing flies, will creep;\n    And then a tinkling, as of tiny bells,\n    That soon into an awful uproar swells\n    Among the water-weeds! Like human voices\n    Inside an amphora the fearsome noise is!\n\n    \u201cAnd then it is the trot of wasted horses\n    Painfully tramping round their weary courses\n    Upon a hard, dry surface, evermore\n    Echoing like a summer threshing-floor,\n    Whom drives a brutal keeper, nothing loth,\n    And hurries them with insult and with oath.\n\n    \u201cBut, when the holy sun is sinking low,\n    The blasphemies turn hoarse and fainter grow,\n    The tinkling dies among the weeds. Far off,\n    The limping, sorry steed is heard to cough;\n    And, on the top of the tall reeds a-swinging,\n    Once more the blackbirds begin sweetly singing.\u201d\n\n    So, full of chat, and with his basket laden,\n    Travelled the little man before the maiden;\n    While the descending sun with rose invests\n    The great blue ramparts and the golden crests\n    Of the hill-range, peaceful and pure and high,\n    Blending its outline with the evening sky.\n\n    Seemed the great orb, as he withdrew in splendour,\n    God\u2019s peace unto the marshes to surrender,\n    And to the great lake, and the olives gray\n    Of the Vaulungo, and the Rhone away\n    There in the distance, and the reapers weary,\n    Who now unbend, and quaff the sea-air, cheery.\n\n    Till the boy cries that far away he sees\n    The home-tent\u2019s canvas fluttering in the breeze.\n    \u201cAnd the white poplar, dear maid, seest thou?\n    And brother Not, who climbs it even now?\n    He\u2019s there after cicalas, be thou sure;\n    Or to spy me returning o\u2019er the moor.\n\n    \u201cAh, now he sees us! And my sister Zeto,\n    Who helped him with her shoulder, turns this way too;\n    And seems to tell my mother that she may\n    Put on the _bouillabaise_ without delay.\n    And mother also, I can see her leaning\n    Over the boat, and the fresh fish a-gleaning.\u201d\n\n    Then, as the two made haste with one accord\n    To mount the dike, the lusty fisher roared,\n    \u201cNow this is charming! Look this way, my wife!\n    Our little Andreloun, upon my life,\n    Will be the prince of fishers one day,\u201d said he;\n    \u201cFor he has caught the queen of eels already!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCANTO IX.\n\n_The Muster._\n\n\n    All sorrowfully droop the lotus-trees;\n    And heart-sick to their hives withdraw the bees,\n    Forgetful of the heath with savoury sweet,\n    And with milk-thistle. Water-lilies greet\n    Kingfishers blue that to the vivary hie,\n    And \u201cHave you seen Mir\u00e8io?\u201d is their cry.\n\n    While Ramoun and his wife by the fireside\n    Are sitting, lost in grief, and swollen-eyed,\n    And at their hearts the bitterness of death.\n    \u201cDoubtless,\u201d they said, \u201cher reason wandereth.\n    Oh, what a mad and wretched maid it is!\n    Oh, what a heavy, cruel downfall this!\n\n    \u201cOh, dire disgrace! Our beauty and our hope\n    So with the last of trampers to elope!\n    Fled with a gypsy! And who shall discover\n    The secret hole of this kidnapping lover,\n    Where he the shameless one conceal\u00e8d hath?\u201d\n    And, as they spake, they knit their brows in wrath.\n\n    Now came the cupbearer with ass and pannier,\n    And from the threshold, in his wonted manner,\n    \u201cGood-morrow,\u201d Jane. \u201cI\u2019m come,\u201d he said, \u201cto seek\n    The labourer\u2019s lunch.\u201d And Ramoun could but wreak\n    His anguish on him. \u201cGo, you curs\u00e8d churl!\n    I\u2019m as a cork-tree barked, without my girl!\u201d\n\n    \u201cYet hark ye, cupbearer, upon your track\n    Across the fields like lightning go you back,\n    And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all\n    Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall\n    Their sickles, and their shepherds too,\u201d said he,\n    \u201cForsake their flocks, and instant come to me!\u201d\n\n    Then, fleeter than a goat, the faithful man\n    O\u2019er stony fallow and red clover ran,\n    Threaded holm-oaks on long declivities,\n    Leaped o\u2019er the roads along the base of these,\n    And now already scents the sweet perfume\n    Of new-mown hay, and the blue-tufted bloom\n\n    Of tall lucerne descries; and presently\n    The measured sweep of the long scythes hears he,\n    And lusty mowers bending in a row\n    Beholds, and grass by the keen steel laid low\n    In verdant swaths,--ever a pleasant sight,--\n    And children, and young maidens, with delight\n\n    Raking the hay and in cocks piling it;\n    While crickets, that before the mowers flit,\n    Hark to their singing. Also, farther on,\n    An ash-wood cart, by two white oxen drawn,\n    Where a deft cartman, piles the well-cured grass\n    By armfuls high and higher, till the mass\n\n    Rises about his loins, and so conceals\n    The rails, the cart-beam, and the very wheels;\n    And, when the cart moves on, with the hay trailing,\n    It seems like some unwieldy vessel sailing.\n    But now the cartman rises, and descries\n    The runner, and \u201cHold, men! there\u2019s trouble!\u201d cries;\n\n    And all his aids, who in great forkfuls carry\n    To him the hay, do for a moment tarry,\n    And wipe their streaming brows; and mowers rest\n    The scythe-back carefully upon the breast,\n    And whet the edge, as they the plain explore\n    That Ph\u0153bus wings his burning arrows o\u2019er.\n\n    Began the rustic messenger straightway,\n    \u201cHear men, what our good master bade me say:\n    \u201c\u2018Cupbearer,\u2019 was his word, \u2018upon your track\n    Across the fields like lightning go you back,\n    And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all\n    Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall\n\n    \u201c\u2018Their sickles, and the shepherds hastily\n    Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!\u2019\u201d\n    Then, fleeter than a goat, the faithful man\n    O\u2019er the rich, madder-growing hillocks ran,--\n    Althen\u2019s bequest,--and saw on every hand\n    The gold of perfect ripeness tinge the land,\n\n    And centaury-starred fields, and ploughmen bent\n    Above their ploughs and on their mules intent,\n    And earth, awakened from her winter-sleep,\n    And shapeless clods upturned from furrows deep,\n    And wagtails frisking o\u2019er; and yet again,\n    \u201cHearken to what our master saith, good men!\n\n    \u201c\u2018Cupbearer,\u2019 was his word, \u2018upon your track\n    Across the fields like lightning go you back,\n    And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all\n    Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall\n    Their sickles, and the shepherds hastily\n    Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!\u2019\u201d\n\n    Then the stout runner, fleeter than the goats,\n    Dashed through the pieces waving with wild-oats,\n    Fosses o\u2019erleaped with meadow-flowers bright,\n    And in great yellow wheat-fields passed from sight,\n    Where reapers forty, sickle each in hand,\n    Like a devouring fire fall on the land,\n\n    And strip her mantle rich and odorous\n    From off her breast, and, ever gaining thus\n    As wolves upon their prey, rob, hour by hour,\n    Earth of her gold, and summer of her flower;\n    While in the wake of each, in ordered line,\n    Falls the loose grain, like tendrils of the vine.\n\n    And the sheaf-binders, ever on the watch,\n    The dropping wheat in handfuls deftly catch,\n    And underneath the arm the same bestow\n    Until, so gathering, they have enow;\n    When, pressing with the knee, they tightly bind,\n    And lastly fling the perfect sheaf behind.\n\n    Twinkle the sickles keen like swarming bees,\n    Or laughing ripple upon sunny seas\n    Where flounders are at play. Erect and tall,\n    With rough beards blent, in heaps pyramidal,\n    The sheaves by hundreds rise. The plain afar\n    Shows like a tented camp in days of war;\n\n    Even like that which once arose upon\n    Our own Beaucaire, in days how long withdrawn!\n    When came a host of terrible invaders,\n    The great Simon, and all the French crusaders,\n    Led by a legate, and in fierce advance\n    Count Raymond slaughtered and laid waste Provence.\n\n    And here, with gleanings falling from her fingers,\n    Full many a merry gleaner strays and lingers;\n    Or in the warm lea of the stacks of corn,\n    Or \u2019mid the canes, drops languidly, o\u2019erborne\n    By some long look, that e\u2019en bewilders her,\n    Because Love also is a harvester.\n\n    And yet again the master\u2019s word,--\u201cGo back\n    Like lightning, cupbearer, upon your track,\n    And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all\n    Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall\n    Their sickles, and the shepherds instantly\n    Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!\u201d\n\n    Then fleeter than a goat sped on his way\n    The faithful soul, straight through the olives gray,\n    On, on, like a north-eastern gale descending\n    Upon the vineyards, and the branches rending,\n    Until, away in Crau, the waste, the lonely,\n    Behold him, where the partridge whirreth only;\n\n    And, still remote, discovers he the flocks\n    Tranquilly lying under the dwarf-oaks,\n    And the chief-shepherd, with his helpers young,\n    For noon-tide rest about the heather flung,\n    And little wagtails hopping at their ease\n    O\u2019er sheep that ruminate unmoved by these.\n\n    And slowly, slowly sailing o\u2019er the sea\n    Diaphanous vapours, light and white, sees he,\n    And deems that up in heaven some fair saint,\n    Gliding too near the sun, is stricken faint\n    On the aerial heights, and hath let fall\n    Her convent-veil. And still the herald\u2019s call:--\n\n    \u201cHark, shepherds, to the master\u2019s word,--\u2018Go back\n    Like lightning, cupbearer, upon your track,\n    And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all\n    Quit ploughs and scythes, the reapers too let fall\n    Their sickles, and the shepherds instantly\n    Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!\u201d\n\n    Then the scythes rested and the ploughs were stayed,\n    The forty highland reapers each his blade\n    Let fall, and rushed as bees on new-found wings\n    Forsake the hive, begin their wanderings,\n    And, by the din of clanging cymbals led,\n    Gather them to a pine. So also fled\n\n    The labourers one and all; the waggoners,\n    And they who tended them; the rick-builders,\n    Gleaners, and shepherds, and of sheaves the heapers,\n    Binders of sheaves, rakers, mowers, and reapers,\n    Mustered them at the homestead. There, heart-sore\n    And silent, on the grass-grown treading-floor,\n\n    The master and his wife sat down to bide\n    The coming of the hands; who, as they hied\n    Thither, much marvelled at the strange behest\n    So calling them from toil, and who addrest\n    These words unto old Ramoun, drawing near:\n    \u201cThou sentest for us, master. We are here.\u201d\n\n    Then Ramoun raised his head, and thus replied;\n    \u201cThe great storm alway comes at harvest-tide.\n    However well-advised, as we advance\n    We must, poor souls, all stumble on mischance:\n    I cannot say it plainer. Friends, I pray,\n    Let each tell what he knows, without delay!\u201d\n\n    Lauren de Gout came forward first. Now he\n    Had failed no single year since infancy\n    His quivered sickle from the hills to bring\n    Down into Arles when ears were yellowing.\n    Brown as a church-stone, he, with weather-stain,\n    Or ancient rock the sea-waves charge in vain.\n\n    The sun might scorch, the north-west wind might roar,\n    But this old king of reapers evermore\n    Was first at work. And now with him there came\n    Seven rough and stalwart boys who bore his name.\n    Him with one voice the harvesters did make\n    Their chief, and justly: therefore thus he spake:\n\n    \u201cIf it be true that, when the dawning sky\n    Is ruddy, there is rain or snow close by,\n    Then what I saw this very morn, my master,\n    Presageth surely sorrow and disaster.\n    So may God stay the earthquake! But as night\n    Fled westward, followed by the early light,\n\n    \u201cAnd wet with dew as ever, I the men\n    First summoned briskly to their toil again,\n    And then myself, my sleeves uprolling gayly,\n    Bent me to mine own task, as I do daily;\n    But at the first stroke wounded thus my hand,--\n    A thing which hath not happened, understand,\n\n    \u201cFor thirty years.\u201d His fingers then he showed,\n    And the deep gash, wherefrom the blood yet flowed.\n    Then groaned, more piteously than before,\n    Mir\u00e8io\u2019s parents; while a lusty mower,\n    One Jan Bouquet, a knight of La Tarasque\n    From Tarascon, a hearing rose to ask.\n\n    A rough lad he, yet kind and comely too.\n    None with such grace in Condamino threw\n    The pike and flag, and never merrier fellow\n    Sang Lagadigad\u00e8u\u2019s ritournello\n    About the gloomy streets of Tarascon,\n    When, once a year, they ring with shout and song,\n\n    And brighten up with dances and are blithe.\n    He might have been a master of the scythe,\n    Could he have held the straight, laborious path;\n    But, when the f\u00eate-days came, farewell the swath,\n    And welcome revels underneath the trees,\n    And orgies in the vaulted hostelries,\n\n    And bull-baitings, and never-ending dances!\n    A very roisterer he who now advances,\n    With, \u201cAs we, master, in long sweeps were mowing,\n    I hailed a nest of francolines, just showing\n    Under a tuft of tares; and, as I bent\n    Over the pendent grass, with the intent\n\n    \u201cTo count the fluttering things, what do I see\n    But horrible red ants--oh, misery!--\n    In full possession of the nest and young!\n    Three were then dead. The rest, with vermin stung,\n    Their little heads out of the nest extended,\n    As though, poor things, they cried to be defended;\n\n    \u201cBut a great cloud of ants, more venemous\n    Than nettles, greedy, eager, furious,\n    Them were o\u2019erwhelming even then; and I,\n    Leaning upon my scythe right pensively,\n    Could hear, far off, the mother agonize\n    Over their cruel fate, with piteous cries.\u201d\n\n    This tale of woe, following upon the other,\n    Is a lance-thrust to father and to mother:\n    The worst foreboding seemeth justified.\n    Then, as a tempest in the hot June-tide,\n    Gathering silently, ascends the air,\n    The weather darkening ever, till the glare\n\n    Of lightning shows in the north-east, and loud\n    Peal follows peal, another left the crowd,\n    One Lou Marran. It was a name renowned\n    In all the farms when winter-eves came round,\n    And labourers, chatting while the mules were stalled\n    And pulling lucerne from the rack, recalled\n\n    What things befell when first this man was hired,\n    Until the lights for lack of oil expired.\n    Seed-time it was, and every other man\n    Was opening up his furrow save Marran;\n    Who, hanging back, eyed coulter, tackle, share,\n    As he the like had seen not anywhere.\n\n    Till the chief-ploughman spake: \u201cHere is a lout\n    To plough for hire! Why, a hog with his snout\n    I wager would work better!\u201d--\u201cI will take\n    Thy bet,\u201d said Lou Marran; \u201cand be the stake\n    Three golden louis! Either thou or I,\n    Master, that sum will forfeit presently.\u201d\n\n    \u201cLet blow the trumpet!\u201d Then the ploughmen twain\n    In two unswerving lines upturn the plain,\n    Making for the chosen goal,--two poplars high.\n    The sun-rays gild the ridges equally,\n    And all the labourers call out, \u201cWell done!\n    Thy furrow, chieftain, is a noble one;\n\n    \u201cYet, sooth to say, so straight the other is,\n    One might an arrow shoot the length of this.\u201d\n    And Lou Marran was winner,--he who here\n    Before the baffled council doth appear,\n    All pale, his bitter evidence to bear:\n    \u201cComrades, as I was whistling, at my share,\n\n    \u201cNot long ago, methought the land was rough,\n    And we would stretch, the day to finish off;\n    When, lo! my beasts with fear began to quake,\n    Bristled their hairy sides, their ears lay back.\n    They stopped; and, with dazed eyes, I saw all round\n    The field-herbs fade, and wither to the ground.\n\n    \u201cI touch my pair. Baiardo sadly eyes\n    His master, but stirs not. Falet applies\n    His nostril to the furrow. Then I lash\n    Their shins; and, all in terror, off they dash,\n    So that the ash-wood beam--the beam, I say--\n    Is rent, and yoke and tackle borne away.\n\n    \u201cThen grew I pale, and all my breath was gone;\n    And, seized as with a strong convulsion,\n    I ground my jaws. A dreadful shudder grew\n    Upon me,--and my hair upraised, I knew,\n    As thistle-down is raised by the wind\u2019s breath;\n    But the wind sweeping over me was Death.\u201d\n\n    \u201cMother of God!\u201d Mir\u00e8io\u2019s mother cried\n    In torture, \u201cdo thou in thy mantle hide\n    Mine own sweet child!\u201d and on her knees she dropped\n    With lifted eyes and parted lips: yet stopped\n    Ere any word was spoken, for she saw\n    Ant\u00e9ume, shepherd-chief and milker, draw\n\n    Hurriedly toward them. \u201cAnd why,\u201d he was panting,\n    \u201cWas she the junipers untimely haunting?\u201d\n    Then, the ring entering, his tale he told.\n    \u201cThis morn, as we were milking in the fold,--\n    So early that above the bare plain showed\n    The sky yet hob-nailed with the stars of God,--\n\n    \u201cA soul, a shadow, or a spectre swept\n    Across the way. The dogs all silence kept,\n    As if afraid, and the sheep huddled close.\n    Thought I,--who scarce have time, as master knows,\n    Ever an _Ave_ in the church to offer,--\n    \u2018Speak, soul, if thou art blest. If not, go suffer!\u2019\n\n    \u201cThen came a voice I knew,--it never varies,--\n    \u2018Will none go with me to the holy Maries,\n    Of all the shepherds?\u2019 Ere the word was said,\n    Afar over the plain the voice had fled.\n    Wilt thou believe it, master?--it was she,\n    Mir\u00e8io!\u201d Cried the people, \u201cCan it be?\u201d\n\n    \u201cIt was herself!\u201d the shepherd-chief replied:\n    \u201cI saw her in the star-light past me glide,\n    Not, surely, as she was in other days,\n    But lifting up a wan, affrighted face;\n    Whereby she was a living soul, I knew,\n    And stung by some exquisite anguish too.\u201d\n\n    At this dread word, the labourers groan, and wring\n    Each other\u2019s horny palms. \u201cBut who will bring,\u201d\n    The stricken mother began wildly shrieking,\n    \u201c_Me_ to the saints? My bird I must be seeking!\n    My partridge of the stony field,\u201d she said,\n    \u201cI must o\u2019ertake, wherever she has fled.\n\n    \u201cAnd if the ants attack her, then these teeth\n    Shall grind them and their hill! If greedy Death\n    Dare touch my darling rudely, then will I\n    Break his old, rusty scythe, and she shall fly\n    Away across the jungle!\u201d Crying thus,\n    Jano Mario fled delirious\n\n    Back to the home; while Ramoun order gave,\n    \u201cCartman, set up the cart-tilt, wet the nave,\n    And oil the axle, and without delay\n    Harness Moureto. We go far to-day,\n    And it is late.\u201d The mother, in despair,\n    Mounted the cart; and more and more the air\n\n    Resounded with the transports of her woe:\n    \u201cO pretty dear! O wilderness of Crau!\n    O endless, briny plains! O dreadful sun,\n    Be kind, I pray you, to the fainting one!\n    But for her,--the accurs\u00e8d witch Taven,--\n    Who lured my darling into her foul den,\n\n    And poured before her, as I know right well,\n    Her philters and her potions horrible,\n    And made her drink,--now may the demons all\n    Who lured St. Anthony upon her fall,\n    And drag her body o\u2019er the rocks of Baux!\u201d\n    As the unhappy soul lamented so,\n\n    Her tones were smothered by the cart\u2019s rude shaking;\n    And the farm-labourers, a last look taking\n    To see if none were coming o\u2019er the plain,\n    Turned slowly, sadly, to their toil again;\n    While swarms of gnats, the idle, happy things,\n    Filled the green walks with sound of humming wings.\n\n\n\n\nCANTO X.\n\n_Camargue._\n\n\n    Listen to me, good people of Provence,\n    Countrymen one and all, from Arles to Vence,\n    From Vanensolo even to Marseilles,\n    And, if the heat oppress you, come, I pray,\n    To Durancolo banks, and, lying low,\n    Hear the maid\u2019s tale, and weep the lover\u2019s woe!\n\n    The little boat, in Andreloun\u2019s control,\n    Parted the water silent as a sole,\n    The while the enamoured maiden whom I sing,\n    Herself on the great Rhone adventuring,\n    Beside the urchin sat, and scanned the wave\n    Intently, with a dreamy eye and grave,\n\n    Till the boy-boatman spake: \u201cNow knewest thou ever,\n    Young lady, how immense is the Rhone river?\n    Betwixt Camargue and Crau might holden be\n    Right noble jousts! That is Camargue!\u201d said he;\n    \u201cThat isle so vast it can discern, I deem,\n    All the seven mouths of the Arlesian stream.\u201d\n\n    The rose-lights of the morn were beauteous\n    Upon the river, as he chatted thus.\n    And the tartanes, with snowy sails outswelled,\n    Tranquilly glided up the stream, impelled\n    By the light breeze that blew from off the deep,\n    As by a shepherdess her milk-white sheep.\n\n    And all along the shore was noble shade\n    By feathery ash and silver poplar made,\n    Whose hoary trunks the river did reflect,\n    And giant limbs with wild vines all bedeckt\n    With ancient vines and tortuous, that upbore\n    Their knotty, clustered fruit the waters o\u2019er.\n\n    Majestically calm, but wearily\n    And as he fain would sleep, the Rhone passed by\n    Like some great veteran dying. He recalls\n    Music and feasting in Avignon\u2019s halls\n    And castles, and profoundly sad is he\n    To lose his name and waters in the sea.\n\n    Meanwhile the enamoured maiden whom I sing\n    Had leaped ashore; and the boy, tarrying\n    Only to say, \u201cThe road that lies before\n    Is thine! The Saints will guide thee to the door\n    Of their great chapel,\u201d took his oars in hand,\n    And swiftly turned his shallop from the land.\n\n    Under the pouring fire of the June sky,\n    Like lightning doth Mir\u00e8io fly and fly.\n    East, west, north, south, she seems to see extend\n    One weary plain, savannas without end,\n    With glimpses of the sea, and here and there\n    Tamarisks lifting their light heads in air.\n\n    Golden-herb, samphire, shave-grass, soda,--these\n    Alone grow on the bitter prairies,\n    Where the black bulls in savage liberty\n    Rejoice, where the white horses all are free\n    To roam abroad and breast the briny gale,\n    Or air surcharged with sea-fog to inhale.\n\n    But now o\u2019er all the marsh, dazzling to view,\n    Soars an immeasurable vault of blue,\n    Intense, profound. The only living thing\n    A solitary gull upon the wing\n    Or hermit-bird whereof the shadow falls\n    Over the desert meres at intervals,\n\n    Or red-legged chevalier, or hern, wild-eyed\n    With crest of three white plumes upraised in pride.\n    But soon the sun so beats upon the plain\n    That the poor, weary wanderer is fain\n    To loose and lift her folded neckerchief,\n    So from the burning heat to find relief.\n\n    Yet grows the torment ever more and more;\n    The sun ascending higher than before,\n    Till, as a starv\u00e8d lion\u2019s eye devours\n    The Abyssinian desert that he scours,\n    Yon lidless orb the very zenith gains\n    And pours a flood of fire o\u2019er all the plains.\n\n    Now were it sweet beneath a beech to slumber!\n    Now, like a swarm of hornets without number,--\n    An angry swarm, fierce darting high and low,--\n    Or liks the hot sparks from a grindstone, grow\n    The pitiless rays; and Love\u2019s poor pilgrim, worn\n    And gasping, and by weariness o\u2019erborne,\n\n    Forth from her bodice draws its golden pin,\n    So that her panting bosom shows within.\n    All dazzling white, like the campanulas\n    That bloom beside the summer sea, it was,\n    And, like twin-billows in a brooklet, full.\n    Anon, the solitary scene and dull\n\n    Loses a little of its sadness, and\n    A lake shows on the limit of the land,--\n    A spacious lake, whose wavelets dance and shine,--\n    While shrubs of golden-herb and jessamine\n    On the dark shore appear to soar aloft\n    Until they cast a shadow cool and soft.\n\n    It seems to the poor maid a heavenly vision,\n    A heartening glimpse into the land elysian.\n    And soon, afar, by that blue wave she sees\n    A town with circling walls and palaces,\n    And fountains gay, and churches without end,\n    And slender spires that to the sun ascend,\n\n    And ships and lesser sailing-craft, sun-bright,\n    Entering the port; and the wind seemeth light.\n    So that the oriflambs and streamers all\n    Languidly round the masts arise and fall.\n    \u201cA miracle!\u201d the maiden thought, and now\n    Wipes the abundant moisture from her brow,\n\n    And, with new hope, toward the town doth fare,\n    Deeming the Maries\u2019 tomb is surely there.\n    Alas! alas! be her flight ne\u2019er so speedy,\n    A change will pass upon the scene. Already\n    The sweet illusion seems to fade and flit;\n    Recedes the vision as she follows it.\n\n    An airy show, the substance of a dream,\n    By spirit woven out of a sunbeam,\n    And all its fair hues borrowed from the sky,--\n    The filmy fabric wavers presently,\n    And melts away, and like a mist is gone.\n    Bewildered by the heat, and quite alone,\n\n    Is left Mir\u00e8io: yet her way she keeps,\n    Toiling over the burning, yielding heaps\n    Of sand; over the salt-encrusted waste--\n    Seamed, swollen, dazzling to the eye--doth haste.\n    On through the tall marsh-grasses and the reeds\n    And rushes, haunted by the gnat, she speeds,\n\n    With Vincen ever in her thought. And soon,\n    Skirting the lonesome Vacar\u00e8s lagune,\n    She sees it loom at last in distance dim,--\n    She sees it grow on the horizon\u2019s rim,--\n    The Saints\u2019 white tower, across the billowy plain,\n    Like vessel homeward bound upon the main.\n\n    And, even at that bless\u00e8d moment, one\n    Of the hot shafts of the unpitying sun\n    The ill-starred maiden\u2019s forehead pierced, and she\n    Staggered, death-smitten, by the glassy sea,\n    And dropped upon the sand. Weep, sons of Crau,\n    The sweetest flower in all the land lies low.\n\n    When, in a valley by the river-side,\n    Young turtle-doves a huntsman bath espied,\n    Some innocently drinking, others cooing,\n    He, through the copse-wood with his gun pursuing,\n    At the most fair takes alway his first aim,--\n    The cruel sun had only done the same.\n\n    Now, as she lay in swoon upon the shore,\n    A swarm of busy gnats came hovering o\u2019er,\n    Who seeing the white breast and fluttering breath,\n    And the poor maiden fainting to her death,\n    With ne\u2019er a friendly spray of juniper\n    From all the pulsing fire to shelter her,\n\n    Each one the viol of his tiny wings\n    Imploring played with plaintive murmurings,--\n    \u201cGet thee up quickly, quickly, damsel fair!\n    For aye malignant is this burning air,\u201d\n    And stung the drooping head; and sea-spray flew,\n    Sprinkling the fevered face with bitter dew:\n\n    Until at last Mir\u00e8io rose again,\n    And, with a feeble moan of mortal pain,\n    \u201cMy head! my head!\u201d she dragged her way forlorn\n    And slow from salicorne to salicorne,--\n    Poor little one!--until her heavy feet\n    Arrived before the seaside Saints\u2019 retreat.\n\n    There, her sad eyes with tears all brimming o\u2019er,\n    Upon the cold flags of the chapel-floor,\n    Wet with the infiltration of the sea,\n    She sank, and clasped her brow in agony;\n    And on the pinions of the waiting air\n    Was borne aloft Mir\u00e8io\u2019s faltering prayer:--\n\n    \u201cO holy Maries, who can cheer\n        The sorrow-laden,\n    Lend, I beseech, a pitying ear\n        To one poor maiden!\n\n    \u201cAnd when you see my cruel care\n        And misery,\n    Then look in mercy down the air,\n        And side with me!\n\n    \u201cI am so young, dear Saints above,\n        And there\u2019s a youth--\n    My handsome Vincen--whom I love\n        With utter truth!\n\n    \u201cI love him as the wayward stream\n        Its wanderings;\n    As loves the new-fledged bird, I deem,\n        To try its wings.\n\n    \u201cAnd now they tell me I must quench\n        This fire eternal;\n    Must from the blossoming almond wrench\n        Its flowers vernal.\n\n    \u201cO holy Maries, who can cheer\n        The sorrow-laden,\n    Lend, I beseech, a pitying ear\n        To one poor maiden!\n\n    \u201cNow am I come, dear Saints, from far,\n        To sue for peace:\n    Nor mother-prayer my way could bar,\n        Nor wilderness;\n\n    \u201cThe sun, that cruel archer, shot\n        Into my brain,--\n    Thorns, as it were, and nails red-hot,--\n        Sharp is the pain;\n\n    \u201cYet give me but my Vincen dear:\n        Then will we duly,\n    We two, with glad hearts worship here,--\n        Oh, I say truly!\n\n    \u201cThen the dire pain will rend no more\n        These brows of mine,\n    And the face bathed in tears before\n        Will smile and shine.\n\n    \u201cMy sire mislikes our love; is cold\n        And cruel often:\n    \u2019Twere naught to you, fair Saints of gold,\n        His heart to soften.\n\n    \u201cHowe\u2019er so hard the olive grow,\n        \u2019Tis mollified\n    By all the winds that alway blow\n        At Advent-tide.\n\n    \u201cThe medlar and the service-plum,\n        So sharp to taste\n    When gathered, strewn on straw become\n        A pleasant feast.\n\n    \u201cO holy Maries, who can cheer\n        The sorrow-laden,\n    Lend, I beseech, a pitying ear\n        To one poor maiden!\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \u201cOh, what can mean this dazzling light?\n        The church is riven\n    O\u2019erhead; the vault with stars is bright.\n        Can this be heaven?\n\n    \u201cOh, who so happy now as I?\n        The Saints, my God,--\n    The shining Saints,--toward me fly,\n        Down yon bright road!\n\n    \u201cO blessed patrons, are you there\n        To help, to stay me?\n    Yet hide the dazzling crowns you wear,\n        Or these will slay me.\n\n    \u201cVeil in a cloud the light appalling!\n        My eyes are heavy.\n    Where is the chapel? Are you calling?\n        O Saints, receive me!\u201d\n\n    So, in a trance and past all earthly feeling,\n    The stricken girl upon the pavement kneeling,\n    With pleading hands, and head thrown backward, cried.\n    Her large and lovely eyes were opened wide,\n    As she beyond the veil of flesh discerned\n    St. Peter\u2019s gates, and for the glory yearned.\n\n    Mute were her lips now; but her face yet shone,\n    And wrapped in glorious contemplation\n    She seemed. So, when the gold-red rays of dawn\n    Early alight the poplar-tips upon,\n    The flickering night-lamp turneth pale and wan\n    In the dim chamber of a dying man.\n\n    And, as at daybreak, also, flocks arouse\n    From slumber and disperse, the sacred house\n    Appeared to open, all its vaulted roof\n    To part, and pillars tall to stand aloof,\n    Before the three fair women,--heavenly fair,--\n    Who on a starry path came down the air.\n\n    White in the ether pure, and luminous,\n    Came the three Maries out of heaven thus.\n    One of them clasped an alabaster vase\n    Close to her breast, and her celestial face\n    In splendour had that star alone for peer\n    That beams on shepherds when the nights are clear.\n\n    The next came with a palm in her hand holden,\n    And the wind lifting her long hair and golden.\n    The third was young, and wound a mantle white\n    About her sweet brown visage; and the light\n    Of her dark eyes, under their falling lashes,\n    Was greater than a diamond\u2019s when it flashes.\n\n    So, nearer to the mourner drew these three,\n    And leaned above, and spake consolingly.\n    And bright and tender were the smiles that wreathed\n    Their lips, and soft the message that they breathed.\n    They made the thorns of cruel martyrdom,\n    That pierced Mir\u00e8io, into flowers bloom.\n\n                  \u2720\n\n    \u201cBe of good cheer, thou poor Mir\u00e8io;\n    For we are they men call the Saints of Baux,--\n    The Maries of Jud\u00e6a: and we three--\n    Be of good cheer!--we watch the stormy sea,\n    Whereby we succour many a craft distresst;\n    For the wild waves are still at our behest.\n\n    \u201cLook up along St. James\u2019s path in air!\n    A moment since we stood together there,\n    At the celestial end thereof, remote,\n    And, gazing through the clustered stars, took note\n    How faithful souls to Campoustello throng\n    To seek the dear Saint\u2019s tomb, and worship long.\n\n    \u201cAnd, with the tune of falling fountains blending,\n    We heard the solemn litanies ascending\n    From pilgrims gathered in the fields at even,\n    And pealing of church-bells, and glory given\n    Unto our son and nephew, by his names\n    Of Spain\u2019s apostle and the greater James.\n\n    \u201cThen were we glad of all the pious vows\n    Paid to his memory; and, on the brows\n    Of those poor pilgrims, dews of peace shed we,\n    And their souls flooded with serenity;\n    When, suddenly, thy warm petition came,\n    And seemed to smite us like a jet of flame.\n\n    \u201cDear child, thy faith is great; yet thy request\n    Our pitying hearts right sorely hath opprest.\n    For thou wouldst drink the waters of pure love,\n    Or ever to its source thee Death remove,\n    The bliss we have in God himself to share.\n    Hast thou, then, seen contentment anywhere\n\n    \u201cOn earth? Is the rich blest, who softly lies,\n    And in his haughty heart his God denies,\n    And cares not for his fellow-man at all?\n    Thou knowest the leech when it is gorged will fall,\n    And he before the judgment-seat must pass\n    Of One who meekly rode upon an ass.\n\n    \u201cIs the young mother happy to impart\n    Unto her baby, with a swelling heart,\n    The first warm jet of milk? One bitter drop,\n    Mingled therewith, may poison all her hope.\n    Now see her lean, distraught, the cradle over,\n    And a fair little corse with kisses cover.\n\n    \u201cAnd hath she happiness, the promised bride,\n    Wandering churchward by her lover\u2019s side?\n    Ah, no! The path under those lingering feet\n    Thornier shall prove, to those who travel it,\n    Than sloe-bush of the moorland. Here below\n    Are only trial sharp and weary woe.\n\n    \u201cAnd here below the purest waters ever\n    Are bitter on the lips of the receiver;\n    The worm is born within the fruit alway;\n    And all things haste to ruin and decay.\n    The orange thou hast chosen, out of all\n    The basket\u2019s wealth, shall one day taste as gall.\n\n    \u201cAnd in thy world, Mir\u00e8io, they who seem\n    To breathe, sigh only. And should any dream\n    Of drinking at the founts that run not dry,\n    Anguish alone such bitter draught will buy.\n    So must the stone be broken evermore,\n    Ere thou extract the shining silver ore.\n\n    \u201cHappy is he who cares for others\u2019 woe,\n    And toils for men, and wearies only so;\n    From his own shoulders tears their mantle warm,\n    Therein to fold some pale and shivering form;\n    Is lowly with the lowly, and can waken\n    Fire-light on cold hearths of the world-forsaken.\n\n    \u201cHark to the sovereign word, of man forgot,\n    \u2018Death too is Life;\u2019 and happy is the lot\n    Of the meek soul and simple,--he who fares\n    Quietly heavenward, wafted by soft airs;\n    And lily-white forsakes this low abode,\n    Where men have stoned the very saints of God.\n\n    \u201cAnd if, Mir\u00e8io, thou couldst see before thee,\n    As we from empyrean heights of glory,\n    This world; and what a sad and foolish thing\n    Is all its passion for the perishing,\n    Its churchyard terrors,--then, O lambkin sweet,\n    Mayhap thou wouldst for death and pardon bleat!\n\n    \u201cBut, ere the wheat-ear hath its feathery birth,\n    Ferments the grain within the darksome earth,--\n    Such ever is the law; and even we,\n    Before we wore our crowns of majesty,\n    Drank bitter draughts. Therefore, thy soul to stay,\n    We\u2019ll tell the pains and perils of our way.\u201d\n\n    Paused for a moment, then, the holy three.\n    The waves, being fain to listen, coaxingly\n    Had flocked along the ocean sand; the pines\n    Unto the rustling water-weeds made signs;\n    And teal and gull beheld, with deep amaze,\n    Peace on the restless heart of Vacar\u00e8s;\n\n    The sun and moon, afar the desert o\u2019er,\n    Bow their great crimson foreheads, and adore;\n    And all Camargue--salt-sown, forsaken isle--\n    Seems thrilled with sacred expectation; while\n    The saints, to hearten for her mortal strife\n    Love\u2019s martyr, tell the story of their life.\n\n\n\n\nCANTO XI.\n\n_The Saints._\n\n\n    \u201cThe cross was looming yet, Mir\u00e8io,\n    Aloft on the Jud\u00e6an mount of woe,\n    Wet with the blood of God; and all the time\n    Seemed crying to the city of the crime,\n    \u2018What hast thou done, thou lost and slumbering--\n    What hast thou done, I say, with Bethlehem\u2019s King?\u2019\n\n    \u201cThe angry clamours of the streets were stayed:\n    Cedron alone a low lamenting made\n    Afar; and Jordan rolled a gloomy tide,\n    Hasting into the desert, there to hide\n    The overflowings of his grief and rage\n    \u2019Mid terebinth and lentisk foliage.\n\n    \u201cAnd all the poorer folk were heavy-hearted,\n    Knowing it was the Christ who had departed,\n    First having opened his own prison-door,\n    On friends and followers to look once more,\n    The sacred keys unto St. Peter given,\n    And, like an eagle, soared away to heaven.\n\n    \u201cOh! then in Jewry woe and weeping were\n    For the fair Galilean carpenter,--\n    Him who His honeyed parables distilled\n    Over their hearts, and fainting thousands filled\n    Upon the hillsides with unleavened bread,\n    And healed the leper and revived the dead.\n\n    \u201cBut scribes and kings and priests, and all the horde\n    Of sacrilegious vendors whom the Lord\n    Had driven from his house, their hatred uttered,\n    \u2018And who the people will restrain,\u2019 they muttered,\n    \u2018Unless in all the region round about\n    The glory of this cross be soon put out?\u2019\n\n    \u201cSo raged they, and the martyrs testified:\n    Stephen the first was stoned until he died,\n    James with the sword was slain, and many a one\n    Cruelly crushed beneath a weight of stone.\n    Yet, dying, all bear record undismayed:\n    \u2018Christ Jesus is the Son of God!\u2019 they said.\n\n    \u201cThen us, brothers and sisters of the slain,\n    Who him had followed in a loving train,\n    They thrust into a crazy bark; and we,\n    Oarless and sailless, drifted out to sea.\n    We women sorely wept, the men their eyes\n    Anxiously lifted to the lowering skies.\n\n    \u201cPalaces, temples, olive-trees, we saw--\n    Swiftly, oh swiftly!--from our gaze withdraw,\n    All saving Carmel\u2019s rugged crests, and those\n    But as a wave on the horizon rose.\n    When suddenly a sharp cry toward us drifted.\n    We turned, and saw a maid with arms uplifted.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Oh, take me with you!\u2019 cried she in distress;\n    \u2018Oh, take me in the bark, my mistresses,\n    With you! I, too, must die for Jesus\u2019 sake!\u2019\n    It was our handmaid Sarah thus who spake.\n    Up there in heaven, whither she is gone,\n    She shineth sweetly as an April dawn!\n\n    \u201cSeaward before the wind our vessel drave.\n    Then God a thought unto Salome gave:\n    Her veil upon the foamy deep she threw,--\n    Oh, wondrous faith!--and on the water, blue\n    And white commingling wildly, it sustained\n    The maid until our fragile craft she gained,\n\n    \u201cTo her as well the strong breeze lending aid.\n    Now saw we in the hazy distance fade,\n    Hill-top by hill-top, our dear native land;\n    The sea encompassed us on every hand;\n    And a sharp home-sickness upon us fell,\n    The pangs whereof he who hath felt may tell.\n\n    \u201cSo must we say farewell, O sacred shore!\n    O doomed Jud\u00e6a, farewell evermore!\n    Thy just are banished, thy God crucified!\n    Henceforth let serpents in thy halls abide;\n    And wandering lions, tawny, terrible,\n    Feed on thy vines and dates. Farewell! farewell!\n\n    \u201cThe gale had grown into a tempest now:\n    The vessel fled before it. On the prow\n    Martial was kneeling, and Saturnius:\n    While, in his mantle folded, Trophimus\n    The aged saint silently meditated;\n    And Maximin the bishop near him waited.\n\n    \u201cHigh on the main-deck Lazarus held his place.\n    There was an awful pallor on his face,--\n    Hues of the winding-sheet and of the grave.\n    He seemed to face the anger of the wave.\n    Martha his sister to his side had crept,\n    And Magdalene behind them cowered and wept.\n\n    \u201cThe slender bark, pursued of demons thus,\n    Contained, beside, Cl\u00e9on, Eutropius,\n    Marcellus, Joseph of Arimathea,\n    Sidonius. And sweet it was to hear\n    The psalms they sang on the blue waste of sea,\n    Leaned o\u2019er the tholes. Te Deum, too, said we.\n\n    \u201cHow rushed the boat the sparkling billows by!\n    E\u2019en yet that sea seems present to the eye.\n    The breeze, careering, on the waters hurled,\n    Whereby the snowy spray was tossed and whirled,\n    And lifted in light wreaths into the air,\n    That soared like souls aloft, and vanished there.\n\n    \u201cOut of the waves at morning rose the Sun,\n    And set therein when his day\u2019s course was run.\n    Mere waifs were we upon the briny plain,\n    The sport of all the winds that scour the main;\n    Yet of our God withheld from all mischance,\n    That we might bear His gospel to Provence.\n\n    \u201cAt last there came a morning still and bright.\n    We noted how, with lamp in hand, the night\n    Most like an anxious widow from us fled,\n    Risen betimes to turn her household bread\n    Within the oven. Ocean seemed as napping,\n    The languid waves the boatside barely tapping.\n\n    \u2018Till a dull, bellowing noise assailed the ear.\n    Unknown before, it chilled our blood to hear.\n    And next we marked a strange, upheaving motion\n    Upon the utmost limit of the ocean,\n    And, stricken speechless by the gathering roar,\n    Helplessly gazed the troubled waters o\u2019er.\n\n    \u201cThen saw we all the deep with horror lower,\n    As the swift squall descended in its power;\n    The waves drop dead still,--\u2019twas a portent fell;\n    The bark hang motionless, as by a spell\n    Entranced; and far away, against the skies,\n    A mountain of black water seemed to rise,\n\n    \u201cAnd all the heaped-up sea, with vapour crested,\n    To burst upon our vessel, thus arrested.\n    God, \u2019twas an awful hour! One monster wave\n    Seemed thrusting us into a watery grave,\n    Fainting to death. Or ever it closed o\u2019er us,\n    The next upon a dizzy height upbore us.\n\n    \u201cThe lightning cleft the gloom with blades of fire;\n    Peal followed peal of thunder, deafening, dire.\n    It was as if all hell had been unchained\n    Upon our tiny craft, which groaned and strained\n    So hunted, and seemed rushing on her wreck,\n    And smote our foreheads with her heaving deck.\n\n    \u201cNow rode we on the shoulders of the main;\n    Now sank into its inky gulfs again,\n    Where the seal dwelleth and the mighty shark,\n    And the sea-peacock; and we seemed to hark\n    To the sad cry, lifted unceasingly,\n    By the unresting victims of the sea.\n\n    \u201cA great wave brake above us, and hope died.\n    Then Lazarus prayed: \u2018O Lord, be thou our guide,\n    Who me ere now out of the tomb didst bring!\n    Succour the bark, for she is foundering!\u2019\n    Like a wood-pigeon\u2019s wing, this outcry clove\n    The tempest, and went up to realms above.\n\n    \u201cAnd Jesus, looking from the palace fair\n    Where he sat throned, beheld his friend\u2019s despair,\n    And the fierce deep yawning to swallow him.\n    Straightway the Master\u2019s gentle eyes grew dim,\n    His heart yearned over us with pity warm,\n    And one long sun-ray leaped athwart the storm.\n\n    \u201cNow God be praised! For, though we yet were tost\n    Right roughly up and down, and sank almost\n    With bitter sea-sickness, our fears were stayed:\n    The haughty waves began to be allayed;\n    Clouds brake afar, then vanished altogether,\n    And a green shore gleamed through the bright\u2019ning weather.\n\n    \u201cLong was it yet ere the shocks quite subsided\n    Of the tempestuous waves; and our boat glided\n    Our crazy boat, nearer that welcome shore\n    All tranquilly, a dying breeze before.\n    Smooth as a grebe our keel the breakers clomb,\n    Furrowing into great flakes the snowy foam.\n\n    \u201cUntil--once more all glory be to God!--\n    Upon a rockless beach we safely trod,\n    And knelt on the wet sand, and cried, \u2018O Thou\n    Who saved from sword and tempest, hear our vow!\n    Each one of us is an evangelist\n    Thy law to preach. We swear it, O Lord Christ!\u2019\n\n    \u201cAt that great name, that cry till then unheard,\n    Noble Provence, wert thou not deeply stirred?\n    Thy woods and fields, in all their fair extent,\n    Thrilled with the rapture of a sweet content;\n    As a dog scents his master\u2019s coming feet,\n    And flies with bounding welcome him to meet.\n\n    \u201cThou, Heavenly Father, also didst provide\n    A feast of shell-fish, stranded by the tide,\n    To stay our hunger; and, to quench our thirst,\n    Madest among the salicornes outburst\n    The same clear, healing spring, which flows alway\n    Inside the church where sleeps our dust to-day.\n\n    \u201cGlowing with zeal, we track the shingly Rhone\n    From moor to moor. In faith we travel on\n    Until right gladly we discern the traces\n    Of human husbandry in those wild places,\n    And soon, afar, the tall Arlesian towers,\n    Crowned by the standard of the emperors.\n\n    \u201cTo-day, fair Arles, a harvester thou seemest,\n    Who sleepest on thy threshing-floor, and dreamest\n    Of glories past; but a queen wert thou then,\n    And mother of so brave sea-faring men,\n    The noisy winds themselves aye lost their way\n    In the great harbour where thy shipping lay.\n\n    \u201cRome had arrayed thee in white marble newly,\n    As an imperial princess decked thee duly.\n    Thy brow a crown of stately columns wore;\n    The gates of thy arena were sixscore;\n    Thou hadst thy theatre and hippodrome,\n    So to make mirth in thy resplendent home!\n\n    \u201cWe pass within the gates. A crowd advances\n    Toward the theatre, with songs and dances.\n    We join them; and the eager thousands press\n    Through the cool colonnades of palaces;\n    As thou, mayhap, a mighty flood hast seen\n    Rush through a maple-shaded, deep ravine.\n\n    \u201cArrived,--oh, shame and sorrow!--we saw there\n    On the proscenium, with bosoms bare,\n    Young maidens waltzing to a languid lyre,\n    And high refrain sung by a shrill-voiced choir.\n    They in the mazes of their dance surrounded\n    A marble shape, whose name like \u2018Venus\u2019 sounded.\n\n    \u201cThe frenzied populace its clamour adds\n    Unto the cries of lasses and of lads,\n    Who shout their idol\u2019s praises o\u2019er and o\u2019er,--\n    \u2018Hail to the Venus, of joy the bestower!\n    Hail to thee, Venus, goddess of all grace!\n    Mother of earth and of the Arlesian race!\u2019\n\n    \u201cThe statue, myrtle-crowned, with nostrils wide\n    And head high-borne, appears to swell with pride\n    Amid the incense-clouds; when suddenly,\n    In horror of so great audacity,\n    Leaps Trophimus amid the maddened wretches,\n    And o\u2019er the bewildered throng his arms outstretches.\n\n    \u201c\u2018People of Arles!\u2019 in mighty tones he cried,\n    \u2018Hear me, even for the sake of Christ who died\n    No more.\u2019 But, smitten by his shaggy frown,\n    The idol groaned and staggered, and fell down,\n    Headlong, from off its marble pedestal.\n    Fell, too, the awe-struck dancers, one and all.\n\n    \u201cTherewith went up, as \u2019twere, a single howl\n    Choked were the gateways with a rabble foul,\n    Who filled all Arles with terror and dismay,\n    So that patricians tore their crowns away;\n    And all the enrag\u00e8d youth closed round us there,\n    While flashed a thousand poniards in the air.\n\n    \u201cYet they recoiled;--whether it were the sight\n    Of us, in our salt-crusted robes bedight;\n    Or Trophimus\u2019 calm brow which beamed on them,\n    As wreathed with a celestial diadem;\n    Or tear-veiled Magdalene, who stood between us,--\n    How tenfold fairer than their sculptured Venus!\n\n    \u201cAnd the old saint resumed: \u2018Arlesian men,\n    Hear ye my message first; and slay me then,\n    If need be. Ye have seen your goddess famed\n    Shiver like glass when my God was but named:\n    Deem not, Arlesians, that the thing was wrought\n    By my poor, feeble voice; for we are naught.\n\n    \u201c\u2018The God who thus your idol smote, but now\n    No lofty temple hath on the hill\u2019s brow;\n    But Day and Night see him alone up there!\n    And stern to sin, but generous to prayer,\n    Is he; and he hath made, with his own hand,\n    The sky, the sea, the mountains, and the land.\n\n    \u201c\u2018One day he saw, from his high dwelling-place,\n    All his good things devoured by vermin base;\n    Slaves who drank hatred with their tears, and had\n    No comforter; and Evil, priestly clad,\n    At altars keeping school; and, in the street,\n    Maids who ran out the libertines to meet.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Wherefore, to purge this vileness, and to end\n    Man\u2019s torment and our pilloried race befriend,\n    He sent his own Son out of heaven down.\n    Naked and poor, wearing no golden crown,\n    He came, was of a virgin born, and saw\n    The daylight first pillowed on stable-straw.\n\n    \u201c\u2018People of Arles, turn to this lowly One.\n    Ourselves can show the wonders he hath done,\n    Who were his comrades; and, in that far land\n    Where rolls the yellow Jordan, saw him stand,\n    In his white linen robe, amid the crowd,\n    Who him assailed with maledictions loud.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Full gentle was his message: for he showed\n    That men should love each other, and that God\n    Is both almighty and all merciful;\n    And that the kingdom where he beareth rule\n    Descendeth not to tyrants, cheats, and scorners,\n    But to the poor, the lowly, and the mourners.\n\n    \u201c\u2018These were his teachings: and he them attested\n    By walking on the waters; and arrested\n    Sickness most bitter by a glance, a word.\n    The dead, by yon grim rampart undeterred,\n    Came back to earth. This Lazarus whom you see\n    Once rotted in the grave. But jealousy\n\n    \u201c\u2018Inflamed the bad hearts of the Jewish kings.\n    They led him to a mountain for these things,\n    And cruelly unto a tree trunk nailed,\n    Spat on the sacred face, and coarsely railed\n    And lifted him on high.\u2019 Here all the throng\n    Brake into loud lament and sobbing strong.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Mercy,\u2019 they cried, \u2018for our iniquities!\n    What shall we do the Father to appease?\n    Answer us, man of God! If blood must flow,\n    He shall have hecatombs.\u2019--\u2018Ah, no! ah, no!\u2019\n    Replied the saint; \u2018but slay before the Father\n    Your vices and your evil passions rather!\u2019\n\n    \u201cSo knelt, and prayed: \u2018Lord, thou dost not desire\n    Odour of slaying, sacrificial fire,\n    Or stately temples! Dearer far to thee\n    Is the bread given to those who fainting be;\n    Or sweet girl\u2019s timid coming, who doth bring\n    Her pure heart, like a May-flower, to her king.\u2019\n\n    \u201cAs o\u2019er the Apostle\u2019s lips, like sacred oil,\n    The word of God was flowing, \u2019gan recoil\n    The idols everywhere, and plunged at last\n    Adown the temple stairs; while tears dropped fast,\n    And rich and poor and working-men all ran\n    To kiss the garment of the holy man.\n\n    \u201cThen bare Sidonius witness. In his night--\n    He was born blind--he led to the true light\n    The men of Arles. And Maximin, beside,\n    The resurrection of the Crucified\n    Set forth, and bade them turn from sin away.\n    Arles was baptized upon that very day.\n\n    \u201cThen the Lord\u2019s breath did speed us in our going,\n    Like wind upon a fire of shavings blowing;\n    For, as we turned of these to take farewell,\n    Came messengers, before our feet who fell,\n    And passionately cried, \u2018O god-sent strangers!\n    Hear yet the story of our cruel dangers.\n\n    \u201c\u2018To our unhappy city came the sound\n    Of marvels wrought and oracles new found.\n    She sends us hither. We are dead who stand\n    Before you! Such a monster wastes our land!\n    A scourge of God, greedy of human gore,\n    It haunts our woods and gorges. We implore\n\n    \u201c\u2018Your help. The monster hath a dragon\u2019s tail,\n    Bristles its back with many a horrid scale.\n    It hath six human feet, and fleet they are;\n    A lion\u2019s jaw; eyes red like cinnabar.\n    Its prey it hideth in a cavern lone,\n    Under a rock that beetles o\u2019er the Rhone.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Now day by day our fishermen grow few\n    And fewer.\u2019 Saying this, they wept anew\n    And bitterly,--the men of Tarascon.\n    Then maiden Martha said, serene and strong,\n    \u2018Ready am I, and my heart yearns with pity.\n    Marcellus, haste: we two will save the city!\u2019\n\n    \u201cFor the last time on earth we did embrace,\n    With hope of meeting in a happy place,\n    And parted. Martial to Limoges him hied,\n    While fair Toulouse became Saturnius\u2019 bride:\n    And our Eutropius the new cause did plead,\n    And sow, in brave Orange, the bless\u00e8d seed.\n\n    \u201cAnd thou, sweet virgin, whither goest thou?\n    With step unfaltering and untroubled brow,\n    Martha her cross and holy-water carried\n    Against the dragon dire, and never tarried.\n    The wild men clomb the pine-trees round about,\n    The fray to witness and the maiden\u2019s rout.\n\n    \u201cStartled from slumber in his darksome cave,\n    Thou shouldst have seen the leap the monster gave\n    Yet vainly writhed he \u2019neath the holy dew,\n    And growled and hissed as Martha near him drew,\n    Bound with a frail moss-halter, and forth led\n    Snorting. Then all the people worshipp\u00e8d.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Huntress Diana art thou?\u2019 prostrate falling\n    Before the Christian maid, began they calling;\n    \u2018Or yet Minerva, the all-wise and chaste?\u2019\n    \u2018Nay, nay!\u2019 the damsel answered in all haste:\n    \u2018I am God\u2019s handmaid only.\u2019 And the crowd\n    She taught until with her to Him they bowed.\n\n    \u201cThen by the power of her young voice alone,\n    She smote Avignon\u2019s rock; and from the stone\n    Welled faith in so pellucid stream, that, later,\n    Clements and Gregories in that fair water\n    Dipped holy chalices their thirst to slake,\n    And Rome long years did for her glory quake.\n\n    \u201cAnd all Provence, regenerate, sang so clear\n    A hymn of praise, that God was glad to hear.\n    Hast thou not marked, when rain begins to fall,\n    How spring the drooping trees and grasses all,\n    How soon the foliage with joy will quiver?\n    So fevered souls drank of this cooling river!\n\n    \u201cThou fair Marseilles, who openest on the sea\n    Thy haughty eyes and gazest languidly,\n    As though naught else were worthy to behold,\n    And, though the winds rage, dreamest but of gold,\n    When Lazarus preached to thee, thou didst begin\n    Those eyes to close, and see the night within,\n\n    \u201cAnd to the sources of that river speeding,\n    That aye the tears of Magdalene were feeding,\n    Didst wash thy sins away: and in this hour\n    Art proud once more; but other storms may lower.\n    Forget not, then, amid thy revelries,\n    Whose tears they are that bathe thine olive-trees!\n\n    \u201cDark cedars that on Mount Sambuco grew,\n    Sheer ledges of the hills of Aix, and you,\n    Tall pines, clothing the flanks of Esterel,\n    And junipers of Trevaresso, tell\n    How thrilled your vales with joy, when, his cross bearing,\n    The bishop Maximin was through them faring.\n\n    \u201cSeest thou one with white arms on her breast,\n    Who kneels and prays in yonder grotto, dressed\n    In the bright garment of her floating hair?\n    Poor sufferer! Her tender knees are bare,\n    And cruelly by the sharp flints are torn.\n    The moon, with pale torch, watches the forlorn\n\n    \u201cAnd sad recluse. The woods in silence bow.\n    The angels hush their very heart-throbs now,\n    As, gazing through a crevice, they espy\n    A pearly tear fall from the lifted eye,\n    And haste the precious gem to gather up,\n    And keep for ever in a golden cup.\n\n    \u201cEnough, O Magdalene! Thirty years ago,\n    The wind that in the forest whispers low\n    Bare thee the pardon of the Man divine!\n    The tears that the rock weeps are tears of thine.\n    These, like a snowfall softly sprinkled o\u2019er,\n    Shall whiten woman\u2019s love for ever more!\n\n    \u201cBut naught can stay the mourner\u2019s gnawing grief.\n    Even the little birds bring not relief,\n    That flock around her, building many a nest\n    On Saint Pilon; nor spirits of the blest,\n    Who lift and rock her in their arms of love,\n    And soar, seven times a day, the vales above.\n\n    \u201cO Lord, be thine the glory! And may we\n    In thy full brightness and reality\n    Behold thee ever! Poor and fugitive,\n    We women did of thy great grace receive.\n    We, even we, touched by thy love supernal,\n    Shed some faint reflex of the light eternal.\n\n    \u201cYe, Alpine peaks and all blue hills of Baux,\n    Unto the latest hour of time will show\n    The traces of our teaching carved in stone!\n    And so Death found us on the marshes lone,\n    Deep in Camargue, encircled by the sea,\n    And from our day\u2019s long labour set us free.\n\n    \u201cAnd as, on earth, haste all things to decay,\n    Faded the memory of our tombs away.\n    While sang Provence her songs, and time rolled on,\n    Till, as Durance is blended with the Rhone,\n    Ended the merry kingdom of Provence,\n    And fell asleep upon the breast of France.\n\n    \u201c\u2018France, take thy sister by the hand!\u2019 So saith\n    Our land\u2019s last king, he drawing near to death.\n    \u2018On the great work the future hath in store,\n    Together counsel take! Thou art the more\n    Strong; she, the more fair: and rebel night\n    Before your wedded glory shall take flight.\u2019\n\n    \u201cThis did Ren\u00e8. Therefore we sought the king,\n    As on his feathers he lay slumbering,\n    And showed the spot where long our bones had lain;\n    And he, with bishops twelve and courtly train,\n    Came down into this waste of sand and waves,\n    And found, among the salicornes, our graves.\n\n    \u201cAdieu, dear Mir\u00e8io! The hour flies;\n    And, like a taper\u2019s flame before it dies,\n    We see life\u2019s light within thy body flicker.\n    Yet, ere the soul is loosed,--come quick, oh quicker,\n    My sisters!--we the hills of heaven must scale\n    Or ever she arrive within the veil.\n\n    \u201cRoses and a white robe we must prepare!\n    She is love\u2019s martyr and a virgin fair\n    Who dies to-day! With sweetest flowers blow,\n    Celestial paths! and on Mir\u00e8io\n    Shine saintly splendours of the heavenly host!\n    Glory to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCANTO XII.\n\n_Death._\n\n\n    As, when in orange-lands God\u2019s day is ending,\n    The maids let fly the leafy boughs, and, lending\n    A helpful hand, the laden baskets lift\n    On head or hip, and fishing-boats adrift\n    Are drawn ashore, and, following the sun,\n    The golden clouds evanish, one by one;\n\n    As the full harmonies of eventide,\n    Swelling from hill and plain and river-side\n    Along the sinuous Argens,--airy notes\n    Of pastoral pipe, love-songs, and bleat of goats,--\n    Grow fainter, and then wholly fade away,\n    And sombre night falls on the mountains gray;\n\n    Or as the last sigh of an anthem soft,\n    Or dying organ-peal, is borne aloft\n    O\u2019er some old church, and on the wandering wind\n    Passes afar,--so passed the music twined\n    Of the three Maries\u2019 voices, heavenward carried.\n    For her, she seemed asleep; for yet she tarried\n\n    Kneeling: and was more fair than ever now,\n    So strange a freak of sunlight crowned her brow.\n    And here they who had sought her through the wild,\n    The aged parents, came, and found their child;\n    Yet stayed their faltering steps the portal under,\n    To gaze on her entranced with awe and wonder;\n\n    Then crossed their foreheads with the holy water,\n    And, hasting o\u2019er the sounding flags, besought her\n    To wake. But, as a frighted vireo\n    Who spies the huntsman, shrieked Mir\u00e8io,\n    \u201cO God, what is it? Father, mother, tell!\n    Where will you go?\u201d And therewith swooned and fell.\n\n    The weeping mother lifts her head, and yearns\n    Over her. \u201cMy sweet, your forehead burns!\n    What means it?\u201d And again, \u201cNo dream is this.\n    My own sweet child,--my very own it is,--\n    Low lying at my feet!\u201d And then she wept\n    And laughed together; and old Ramoun crept\n\n    Beside them. \u201cLittle darling, it is I,\n    Your father, has your hand!\u201d Then suddenly\n    His anguish choked him, and he could but hold\n    And chafe and strive to warm those fingers cold.\n    Meanwhile the wind the mournful tidings bore\n    Abroad, and all Li Santo thronged the door,\n\n    And anxiously. \u201cBear the sick child,\u201d they say,\n    \u201cInto the upper chapel, nor delay;\n    And let her touch the dear Saints\u2019 relics thus\n    Within their reliquaries marvellous;\n    Or kiss, at least, with dying lips!\u201d And there\n    Two women raised, and bore her up the stair.\n\n    In this fair church, altars and chapels three,\n    Built one upon the other, you may see,\n    Of solid stone. In that beneath the ground\n    The dusky gypsies kneel, with awe profound,\n    Before Saint Sarah. One is over it\n    That hath God\u2019s altar. And one higher yet,\n\n    On pillars borne,--last of the sanctuaries,--\n    The small, funereal chapel of the Maries,\n    With heavenward vault. And here long years have lain\n    Rich legacy,--whence falleth grace like rain!--\n    The ever-blessed relics. Four great keys\n    Enlock the cypress chests that shelter these.\n\n    Once are they opened in each hundred years;\n    And happy, happy shall he be who nears\n    And sees and touches them! Upon the wave\n    Bright star and weather fair his bark shall have,\n    His trees be with abundant fruitage graced,\n    His faithful soul eternal blessing taste!\n\n    An oaken door, with carvings rich and rare,\n    Gift of the pious people of Beaucaire,\n    Closes the holy precinct. And yet surely\n    That which defends is not the portal purely,--\n    Is not the circling rampart; but the grace\n    Descending from the azure depths of space.\n\n    So to the chapel bare they the sick child,\n    While up the winding stair the folk defiled;\n    And, as a white-robed priest threw wide the door,\n    They, entering, fell on the dusty floor,\n    As falls full-bearded barley when a squall\n    Hath smitten it, and worshipped one and all.\n\n    \u201cO lovely Saints! O friendly Saints!\u201d they said,\n    \u201cO Saints of God, pity this poor young maid!\u201d\n    \u201cPity her!\u201d sobbed the mother. \u201cI will bring,\n    When she is well, so fair an offering!\n    My flower-carved cross, my golden ring!\u201d she cried,\n    \u201cAnd tell the tale through town and country-side!\u201d\n\n    \u201cO Saints,\u201d groaned Ramoun, stumbling in the gloom\n    While shook his aged head, \u201cbe kind, and come!\n    Look on this little one! She is my treasure!\n    She is my plover! Pretty beyond measure,\n    And good and meet for life! Send my old bones\n    To dung the mallows, but save her!\u201d he moans.\n\n    And all the while Mir\u00e8io lay in swoon,\n    Till a breeze, with declining afternoon,\n    Blew from the tamarisks. Then, hoping still\n    To call her back to life, they raised with skill,\n    The flower of Lotus Farm, and tenderly\n    Laid on the tiles that overlook the sea.\n\n    There, from the doorway leading on the tiles,--\n    The chapel\u2019s eye,--one\u2019s vision roams for miles,\n    Even to the pallid limit of the brine,\n    The blending and the separating line\n    Between the clouds and waters to explore,\n    And the great waves that roll for evermore.\n\n    Insensate and unceasing and untiring,\n    They follow one another on; expiring,\n    With sullen roar, amid the drifted sand:\n    While vast savannas, on the other hand,\n    Stretch till they meet a heaven without a stain,\n    Unfathomed blue over unmeasured plain.\n\n    Only a light-green tamarisk, here and there,\n    Quivering in the faintest breath of air,\n    Or a long belt of salicornes, appears,\n    With swans that dip them in the desert meres,\n    With oxen roaming the waste moor at large;\n    Or swimming Vacares from marge to marge.\n\n    At last the maiden murmured, but how weak\n    The voice! how vague the words! \u201cOn either cheek\n    I seem to feel a breeze,--one from the sea,\n    One from the land: and this refreshes me\n    Like morning airs; but that doth sore oppress\n    And burn me, and is full of bitterness.\u201d\n\n    So ceased. The people of Li Santo turn\n    Blankly from plain to ocean: then discern\n    A lad who nears them, at so fleet a pace\n    The dust in clouds is raised; and, in the race\n    Outstripped, the tamarisks are growing small,\n    And far behind the runner seem to fall.\n\n    Vincen it was. Ah, poor unhappy youth!\n    When Master Ambroi spake that sorry truth,\n    \u201cMy son, the pretty little lotus-spray\n    Is not for you!\u201d he turned, and fled away;\n    From Valabr\u00e8go like a bandit fled,\n    To see her once again. And when they said\n\n    In Crau, \u201cShe in Li Santo must be sought,\u201d\n    Rhone, marshes, weary Crau, withheld him not;\n    Nor stayed he ever in his frantic search\n    Till, seeing that great throng inside the church,\n    He rose on tiptoe deadly pale, and crying,\n    \u201cWhere is she?\u201d And they answered, \u201cShe is dying\n\n    \u201cAbove there in the chapel.\u201d In despair\n    And all distraught, he hurried up the stair;\n    But, when his eye fell on the prostrate one,\n    Threw his hands wildly up. \u201cWhat have I done,--\n    What have I done against my God and hers\n    To call down on me such a heavy curse\n\n    \u201cFrom Heaven? Have I cut the throat of her\n    Who gave me birth? or at a church taper\n    Lighted my pipe? or dared I, like the Jews,\n    The holy crucifix \u2019mong thistles bruise?\n    What is it, thou accurs\u00e8d year of God,--\n    Why must I bear so terrible a load?\n\n    \u201c\u2019Twas not enough my darling they denied\n    To me! They\u2019ve hunted her to death!\u201d he cried;\n    And then he knelt, and kissed her passionately;\n    And all the people, when they saw how greatly\n    His heart was wrung, felt theirs too swell with pain,\n    And wept aloud above the stricken twain.\n\n    Then, as the sound of many waters, falling\n    Far down a rocky valley, rises calling\n    Unto the shepherd high the hills among,\n    Rose from the church a sound of full-choired song,\n    And all the temple trembled with the swell\n    Of that sweet psalm the Santen sing so well:--\n\n    \u201cSaints of God, ere now sea-faring\n      On these briny plains of ours,\n    Who have set a temple bearing\n      Massy walls and snowy towers,\n\n    \u201cWatch the wave-tossed seaman kindly;\n      Lend him aid the bark to guide;\n    Send him fair winds, lest he blindly\n      Perish on the pathless tide!\n\n    \u201cSee the woman poor and sightless:\n      Ne\u2019er a word she uttereth;\n    Dark her days are and delightless,--\n      Darkness aye is worse than death.\n\n    \u201cVain the spells they have told o\u2019er her,\n      Blank is all her memory.\n    Queens of Paradise, restore her!\n      Touch those eyes that they may see!\n\n    \u201cWe who are but fishers lowly,\n      Lift our hearts ere forth we go;\n    Ye, the helpful saints and holy,\n      Fill our nets to overflow.\n\n    \u201cSo, when penitents heart-broken,\n      Sue for pardon at your door,\n    Flood their souls with peace unspoken,\n      White flowers of our briny moor!\u201d\n\n    So prayed the Santen, with tears and strong crying.\n    Then came the patrons to the maid low-lying,\n    And breathed a little life into her frame;\n    So that her wan eyes brightened, and there came\n    A tender flush of joy her visage over,\n    At the sweet sight of Vincen bent over her.\n\n    \u201cWhy love, whence came you? Do you mind, I pray,\n    A word you said down at the Farm one day,\n    Walking under the trellis, by my side?\n    You said, \u2018If ever any harm betide,\n    Hie thee right quickly to the holy Saints,\n    Who cure all ills and hearken all complaints.\u2019\n\n    \u201cDearest, I would you saw my heart this minute,\n    As in a glass, and all the comfort in it!\n    Comfort and peace like a full fountain welling\n    Through all my happy spirit! There\u2019s no telling--\n    A grace beyond my uttermost desires!\n    Look, Vincen: see you not God\u2019s angel-choirs?\u201d\n\n    Pausing, she gazed into the deep blue air.\n    It was as if she could discern up there\n    Wonderful things hidden from mortal men.\n    But soon her dreamy speech began again:\n    \u201cAh, they are happy, happy souls that soar\n    Aloft, tethered by flesh to earth no more!\n\n    \u201cDid you mark, Vincen dear, the flakes of light\n    That fell when they began their heavenward flight?\n    If all their words to me had written been,\n    They would have made a precious book, I ween.\u201d\n    Here Vincen, who had striven his tears to stay,\n    Brake forth in sobs, and gave his anguish way.\n\n    \u201cWould to God I _had_ seen them ere they went!\n    Ah, would to God! Then to their white raiment,\n    Like a tick fastening, I would have cried,\n    \u2018O queens of heaven! Sole ark where we may bide,\n    In this late hour, do what you will with me!\n    Maimed, sightless, toothless, I would gladly be;\n\n    \u201c\u2018But leave my pretty little fairy sane\n    And sound!\u2019\u201d Here brake Mir\u00e8io in again:\n    \u201cThere are they, in their linen robes of grace!\n    They come!\u201d and from her mother\u2019s fond embrace\n    Began to struggle wildly to be free,\n    And waved her hand afar toward the sea.\n\n    Then all the folk turned also to the main,\n    And under shading hands their eyes \u2019gan strain;\n    Yet, save the pallid limit of the brine,\n    The blending and the separating line\n    \u2019Twixt wave and vault, they nothing could descry.\n    \u201cNaught cometh,\u201d said they. But the child, \u201cOh, ay!\n\n    \u201cLook closer! There\u2019s a bark, without a sail,\n    Wafted toward us by a gentle gale,\n    And they are on it! And the swell subsides\n    Before them, and the bark so softly glides!\n    Clear is the air and all the sea like glass,\n    And the sea-birds do homage as they pass!\u201d\n\n    \u201cPoor child! she wanders,\u201d murmured they; \u201cfor we\n    See only the red sunset on the sea!\u201d\n    \u201cYet it is they! Mine eyes have told me true,\u201d\n    The sick one panted--\u201c\u2019Tis the boat in view!\n    Now low, now lifted, it is drawing near,\n    Oh, miracle of God!--the boat is here!\u201d\n\n    Now was she paling, as a marguerite\n    Half-blown and smitten by a tropic heat,\n    While crouching Vincen, horror in his heart,\n    Or ere his well-belov\u00e8d quite depart\n    Hath her in charge unto our Lady given,\n    To the Saints of the chapel and of heaven.\n\n    Lit are the tapers, and, in violet stole\n    Begirt, the priest, to stay the passing soul,\n    Lays angel\u2019s bread to those dry lips of hers,\n    And the last unction so administers;\n    Then of her body the seven parts anoints\n    With holy oil, as holy church appoints.\n\n    The hour was calm. Upon the tiles no word\n    Save the _oremus_ of the priest was heard.\n    The last red shaft of the declining day\n    Struck on the wall and passed, and heaven turned gray.\n    The sea\u2019s long waves came slowly up the shore,\n    Brake with a murmur soft, and were no more.\n\n    Beside the maid knelt father, mother, lover,\n    And hoarsely sobbed at intervals above her;\n    Till once again her lips moved, and she spake;\n    \u201cNow is the parting close at hand! So take\n    My hand, and press it quickly, dears. Lo, now\n    The glory grows on either Mary\u2019s brow!\n\n    \u201cThe pink flamingoes flock from the Rhone shore,\n    The tamarisks in blossom all adore.\n    The dear Saints beckon me to them,\u201d she said.\n    \u201cThey tell me I need never be afraid:\n    They know the constellations of the skies;\n    Their bark will take us quick to Paradise!\u201d\n\n    \u201cMy little pet,\u201d said Ramoun, quite undone,\n    \u201cYou will not go, and leave the home so lone!\n    Why have I felled my oaks with such ado?\n    The zeal that nerved me only came of you.\n    If the hot sun on sultry glebe o\u2019ertook me,\n    I thought of you, and heat and thirst forsook me.\u201d\n\n    \u201cDear father, if a moth shall sometime fly\n    About your lamp at night, that will be I.\n    But see! the Saints are standing on the prow!\n    They wait. I\u2019m coming in a moment now!\n    Slowly I move, good Saints, for I am ailing.\u201d\n    \u201cIt is too much!\u201d the mother brake out, wailing.\n\n    \u201cOh, stay with me! I cannot let you die.\n    And, when you\u2019re well, Mir\u00e8io, by and by\n    We\u2019ll go some day to Aunt Aurano\u2019s, dear,\n    And carry pomegranates. Do you hear?\n    Maiano is not distant from our home;\n    And, in one day, one may both go and come.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNot very distant, mother,--that I know;\n    But all alone thou wilt the journey go!\n    Now give me my white raiment, mother mine.\n    Oh, how the mantles of the Maries shine!\n    Sawest thou ever such a dazzling sight?\n    The snow upon the hillsides is less white!\u201d\n\n    \u201cO thou,\u201d cried the dark weaver, \u201cwho didst ope\n    The palace of thy love to me, my hope,\n    My queen, my all! A blossoming alms thou gavest;\n    The mire of my low life in thine thou lavest,\n    Till it shines like a mirror, and dost place\n    Me in eternal honour by thy grace.\n\n    \u201cPearl of Provence! of my young days the sun!\n    Shall it be ever said of such an one,\n    I saw upon her forehead the death-dew?\n    Shall it be said, puissant Saints, of you,\n    You looked unmoved upon her mortal pain,\n    Letting her clasp your sacred sill in vain?\u201d\n\n    Slowly the maiden answered, \u201cMy poor friend,\n    What is it doth affright you, and offend?\n    Believe me, dear, the thing that we call death\n    Is a delusion. Lo! it vanisheth,\n    As a fog when the bells begin their pealing;\n    As dreams with daylight through the window stealing.\n\n    \u201cI am not dying! See, I mount the boat\n    With a light foot! And now we are afloat!\n    Good-by! good-by! We are drifting out to sea.\n    The waves encompass us, and needs must be\n    The very avenue to Paradise,\n    For all around they touch the azure skies!\n\n    \u201cGently they rock us now. And overhead\n    So many stars are shining! Ah,\u201d she said,\n    \u201cAmong those worlds one surely may be found\n    Where two may love in peace! Hark, Saints, that sound!\n    Is it an organ played across the deep?\u201d\n    Then sighed, and fell, as it had been, asleep.\n\n    And, by her smiling lips, you might have guessed\n    That yet she spake. Only the Santen pressed\n    About the sleeper in a mournful band,\n    And, with a taper passed from hand to hand,\n    Signed the cross o\u2019er her. While, as turned to stone,\n    The parents gazed on what themselves had done.\n\n    To them her form is all enrayed with light.\n    Vainly they feel her cold, they see her white:\n    The awful stroke they comprehend not now.\n    But, soon as Vincen marked the level brow,\n    The rigid arms, the sweet eyes wholly veiled,\n    \u201cSee you not she is dead?\u201d he loudly wailed.\n\n    \u201cQuite dead?\u201d And therewith fiercely wrung his hands,\n    As he of old had wrung the osier-strands,\n    And threw his naked arms abroad. \u201cMy own!\u201d\n    He cried, \u201cthey will not weep for you alone:\n    With yours, the trunk of my life too they fell.\n    \u2018Dead\u2019 was I saying? \u2019Tis impossible:\n\n    \u201cA demon whispered me the word, no doubt!\n    Tell me, in God\u2019s name, ye who stand about,--\n    Ye who have seen dead women ere to-day,--\n    If, passing through the gates, they smile that way.\n    Her look is well-nigh merry, do you see?\n    Why do they turn their heads away from me,\n\n    \u201cAnd weep? This means, I think, that all is o\u2019er.\n    Her pretty prattle I shall hear no more:\n    Still is the voice I loved!\u201d All hearts were thrilled;\n    Tears rushed like rain, and sobs would not be stilled.\n    One sound went up of weeping and lament,\n    Till the waves on the beach returned the plaint.\n\n    So when in some great herd a heifer dies,\n    About the carcass where it starkly lies\n    Nine following eves the beasts take up their station,\n    And seem to mourn after their speechless fashion;\n    The sea, the plain, the winds, thereover blowing,\n    Echo nine days with melancholy lowing,--\n\n    \u201cPoor Master Ambroi!\u201d Vincen wandered on,\n    \u201cThou wilt weep heavy tears over thy son!\n    And now, good Santen, one last wish is mine,--\n    Bury me with my love, below the brine;\n    Scoop in the oozy sand a crib for two:\n    Tears for so great a mourning will not do.\n\n    \u201cAnd a stone wall about the basin set,\n    So the sea flow not in, and part us yet!\n    Santen, I trust you! Then, while they are beating\n    Their brows, and with remorse her name repeating,\n    There at the farm where her home used to be,\n    Far from the unrest of the upper sea,\n\n    \u201cDown in the peaceful blue we will abide,\n    My oh so pretty, alway side by side;\n    And you shall tell me of your Maries over,\n    Over, until with shells the great storms cover.\u201d\n    Here the crazed weaver on the corse him threw,\n    And from the church arose the psalm anew.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \u201cSo, when penitents heart-broken\n      Sue for pardon at your door,\n    Flood their souls with peace unspoken,\n      White flowers of our briny moor!\u201d\n\n                          The Gresham Press,\n                            UNWIN BROTHERS,\n                         CHILWORTH AND LONDON.","title":"Mir\u00e8io, a Proven\u00e7al Poem","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":42379}