When thou dost visit her, beloved St. John!
The sparks went whirling upward, and hummed on
The tabor gravely and incessantly,
Like the low surging of a tranquil sea.
Then did the dusky troop their sickle wave,
And three great leaps athwart the flame they gave,
And cloves of odorous garlic from a string
Upon the glowing embers they did fling,
And holy herb and John’s-wort bare anigh;
And these were purified and blessed thereby.
Then “Hail, St. John!” thrice rose a deafening shout;
And hills and plain, illumined round about,
Sparkled as though the dark were showering stars.
And sure the Saint, above the heaven’s blue bars,
The breath of all this incense doth inhale,
Wafted aloft by the unconscious gale.
Canto VIII
La Crau
The rage of the mighty lioness
Who shall restrain?
She came to her den, and she found it bare:
A Moorish huntsman had entered there.
The huntsman came, and the whelp is gone.
Away through the canebrake they have flown,
Galloping far at a headlong pace.
To follow—vain!
She roars awhile in her deep despite,
Then rises and courses, lank and light,
Over the hills of Barbary.
As a maid bereft of her love is she.
Mirèio lay upon her little bed,
Clasping in both her hands her burning head.
Dim was the chamber; for the stars alone
Saw the maid weep, and heard her piteous moan—
“Help, Mother Mary, in my sore distress!
Oh, cruel fate! Oh, father pitiless,
“Who tread me underfoot! Could you but see
My heart’s mad tumult, you would pity me!
You used to call me darling long ago,
And now you bend me to the yoke as though
I were a vicious colt that you were fain
To break. Why does the sea not flood this plain?
“I would the wealthy lands that make me weep
Were hid for evermore in the great deep!
Ah, had I in a serpent’s hole been born,
Of some poor vagrant, I were less forlorn!
For then if any lad, my Vincen even,
Had asked my hand, mayhap it had been given.
“O Vincen, who so handsome are and true!
If only they would let me go to you,
I’d cling as clings the tender ivy-vine
Unto the oak: I would not ever pine
For food, but life in your caresses find,
And drink at wayside pools with happy mind.”
So on her pallet the sweet maid lay sobbing,
Fire in her heart and every vein a-throbbing,
And all the happy time remembering—
Oh, calm and happy!—of her love’s fair spring,
Until a word in Vincen’s very tone
Comes to her memory. “ ’Twas you, my own—
“ ’Twas you,” she cried, “came one day to the farm,
And said, ‘If ever thou dost come to harm—
If any lizard, wolf, or poisonous snake,
Ever should wound thee with its fang—betake
Thyself forthwith to the most holy Saints,
Who cure all ills and hearken all complaints.’
“And sure I am in trouble now,” she said:
“Therefore we’ll go, and come back comforted.”
Then lightly from her white cot glided she,
And straightway opened, with a shining key,
The wardrobe where her own possessions lay:
It was of walnut wood, and carven gay.
Here were her childhood’s little treasures all:
Here sacredly she kept the coronal
Worn at her first communion; and thereby
A faded sprig of lavender and dry,
And a wax taper almost burned, as well,
Once blessed, the distant thunder to dispel.
A smart red petticoat she first prepares,
Which she herself had quilted into squares—
Of needlework a very masterpiece;
And round her slender waist she fastens this;
And over it another, finer one
She draws; and next doth a black bodice don,
And fasten firmly with a pin of gold.
On her white shoulders, her long hair unrolled,
Curling, and loose like a dark garment, lay,
Which, gathering up, she swiftly coils away
Under a cap of fine, transparent lace;
Then decks the veilèd tresses with all grace,
Thrice with a ribbon blue encircling them—
The fair young brow’s Arlesian diadem.
Lastly, she adds an apron to the rest,
And folds a muslin kerchief o’er her breast.
In her dire haste, alone, the child forgat
The shallow-crowned, broad-brimmed Provençal hat,
That might have screened her from the mortal heat.
But, so arrayed, crept forth on soundless feet
Adown the wooden staircase, in her hand
Her shoes, undid the heavy door-bar, and
Her soul unto the watchful saints commended,
As away like a wind of night she wended.
It was the hour when constellations keep
Their friendly watch o’er followers of the deep.
The eye of St. John’s eagle flashed afar,
As it alighted on a burning star,
One of the three where the evangelist
Hath his alternate dwelling. Cloud nor mist
Defaced the dark serene of starlit sky;
But the great chariot of souls went by
On wingèd wheels along the heavenly road,
Bearing away from earth its blessed load.
Far up the shining steeps of Paradise,
The circling hills behold it as it flies.
Mirèio hasted no less anxiously
Than Magalouno74 in the days gone by,
Who searched the wood with sad, inquiring glance
For her lost lover, Pèire of Provence,
When cruel waves divorced him from her side,
And left her lone and wretched. Soon espied
The maid, upon the boundary of the lea,
Folds where her sire’s own shepherds could she see
Already milking. Some the sheep compelled,
Against the pen-side by the muzzle held,
To suckle quietly their tawny lambs.
Always arose the bleat of certain dams;
While other childless ones the shepherds guide
Toward the milker. On a stone astride,
Mute as the very night, sits he, and dim;
While, pressed from swollen udders, a long stream
Of warm fine milk into the pail goes leaping,
The white froth high about its border creeping.
The sheep-dogs all in tranquil slumber lay.
The fine, large dogs—as white as lilies they—
Stretched round the enclosure, muzzles deep in thyme.
And peace was everywhere, and summer clime;
And o’er the balmy country, far and near,
Brooded a heaven full of stars, and clear.
So in the stillness doth Mirèio dash
Along the hurdles, like a lightning flash,
Lifting a wailing cry that never varies—
“Will none go with me to the holy Maries,
Of all the shepherds?” They and the sheep hear it,
And see the maiden flitting like a spirit,
And huddle up, and bow their heads, as though
Smit by a sudden gale. The farm-dogs know
Her voice, but never stir her flight to stay.
And now is she already far away,
Threads the dwarf-oaks, and like a partridge rushes
Over the holly and the camphyre bushes,
Her feet scarce touching earth. And now she passes
Curlews in flocks asleep amid
