Under the oaks, who, roused from slumber soft,
Arise in haste, and wing their flight aloft
Over the sad and barren plain; and all
Together “Cour’li! cour’li! cour’li!” call,
Until the Dawn, with her dew-glittering tresses,
From mountain-top to level slow progresses,
Sweetly saluted by the tufted lark,
Soaring and singing o’er the caverns dark
In the great hills, whose pinnacles each one
Appear to sway before the rising sun.
Then was revealed La Crau, the bare, the waste,
The rough with stones, the ancient, and the vast,
Whose proud old giants, if the tale be true,
Once dreamed, poor fools, the Almighty to subdue
With but a ladder and their shoulders brave;
But He them ’whelmed in a destroying wave.
Already had the rebels dispossest
The Mount of Victory75 of his tall crest,
Lifted with lever from its place; and sure
They would have helped it high upon Ventour,
As they had piled the rugged escarpment
They from the Alpine range had earlier rent.
But God his hand extended o’er the plain:
The northwest wind, thunder, and hurricane
He loosed; and these arose like eagles three
From mountain clefts and caverns and the sea,
Wrapped in thick fog, with fury terrible,
And on the marble pile together fell.
Then were the rude Colossi overthrown;
And a dense covering of pudding-stone
Spread o’er La Crau, the desolate, the vast,
The mute, the bare to every stormy blast;
Who wears the hideous garment to this day.
Meanwhile Mirèio farther speeds away
From the home-lands, while the sun’s ardent glare
Makes visible all round the shimmering air;
And shrill cicalas, grilling in the grass,
Beat madly evermore their tiny brass.
Nor tree for shade was there, nor any beast:
The many flocks, that in the winter feast.
On the short, savoury grasses of the moor,
Had climbed the Alps, where airs are cool and pure,
And pastures fadeless. Yet the maid doth fly
Under the pouring fire of a June sky—
Fly, fly, like lightning. Lizards large and gray
Peep from their holes, and to each other say,
“She must be mad who thus the shingle clears,
Under a heat that sets the junipers76
A-dancing on the hills; on Crau, the sands.”
The praying mantes77 lift beseeching hands,
“Return, return, O pilgrim!” murmuring,
“For God hath opened many a crystal spring;
“And shady trees hath planted, so the rose
To save upon your cheeks. Why, then, expose
Your brow to the unpitying summer heat?”
Vainly as well the butterflies entreat.
For her the wings of love, the wind of faith,
Bear on together, as the tempest’s breath
White gulls astray over the briny plains
Of Agui-Morto. Utter sadness reigns
In scattered sheep-cots of their tenants left,
And overrun with salicorne. Bereft
In the hot desert, seemed the maid to wake,
And see nor spring nor pool her thirst to slake,
And slightly shuddered. “Great St. Gent!”78 she cried,
“O hermit of the Bausset mountain-side!
O fair young labourer, who to thy plough
Didst harness the fierce mountain-wolf ere now,
And in the flinty rock, recluse divine,
Didst open springs of water and of wine,
“And so revive thy mother, perishing
Of heat! like me, when they were slumbering,
Thou didst forsake thy household, and didst fare
Alone with God through mountain-passes, where
Thy mother found thee! For me, too, dear Saint,
Open a spring; for I am very faint,
“And my feet by the hot stones blisterèd!”
Then, in high heaven, heard what Mirèio said
The good St. Gent: and soon she doth discover
A well far off, with a bright stone laid over;
And, like a marten through a shower of rain,
Speeds through the flaming sun-rays, this to gain.
The well was old, with ivy overrun—
A watering-place for flocks; and from the sun
Scarce by it sheltered sat a little boy,
With basket-full of small white snails for toy.
With his brown hands, he one by one withdrew them,
The tiny harvest-snails; and then sang to them—
“Snaily, snaily, little nun,
Come out of the cell, come into the sun!
Show me your horns without delay,
Or I’ll tear your convent-walls away.”
Then the fair maid of Crau, when she had dipped
Her burning lips into the pail, and sipped,
Quickly upraised a lovely, rosy face,
And, “Little one! what dost thou here?” she says.
A pause. “Pick snailies from the stones and grass?”
“Thou hast guessed right!” the urchin’s answer was.
“Here in my basket have I—see, how many!
Nuns, harvest-snails, and these,79 as good as any!”
“And thou dost eat them”—“Nay, not I,” replied he;
“But mother carries them to Arles on Friday,
And sells them; and brings back nice, tender bread.
Thou wilt have been to Arles?”—“Never!” she said.
“What, never been to Arles! But I’ve been there!
Ah, poor young lady! Couldst thou see how fair
And large a city that same Arles is grown!
She covers all the seven mouths of the Rhône.
Upon the islands of the great salt-mere
Her cattle graze: wild horses doth she rear.
“And in one summer, corn enough doth grow,
To feed her seven full years, if need were so.
She’s fishermen who fish on every sea—
Seamen who front the storms right valiantly
Of distant waters.” Thus with pretty pride
The boy his sunny country glorified,
In golden speech;—her blue and heaving ocean;
Her Mont Majour, that keeps the mills in motion—
These with soft olives ever feeding fully;
Her bitterns in the marshes booming dully.
One thing alone, thou lovely, dusky town,
The child forgat—of all thy charms the crown;
He said not, fruitful Arles, that thy fine air
Gives to thy daughters beauty rich and rare,
As grapes to autumn, or as wings to bird,
Or fragrance to the hillsides. Him had heard
The country maiden, sadly, absently.
But now, “Bright boy, wilt thou not go with me?”
She said; “for, ere the frogs croak in the willow,
My foot must planted be beyond the billow.
Come with me! I must o’er the Rhône be rowed,
And left there in the keeping of my God!”
“Now, then,” the urchin cried, “thou poor, dear lady,
Thou art in luck! for we are fishers,” said he;
“And thou shalt sleep under our tent this night,
Pitched in the shadow of the poplars white,
So keeping all thy pretty clothing on;
And father, with the earliest ray of dawn,
In our own little boat will put thee o’er!”
But she, “Do not detain me, I implore:
“I am yet strong enough this night to wander.”
“Now God forbid!” was the lad’s prompt rejoinder:
“Wouldst thou see, then, the crowd of sorry shapes
From the Trau-de-la-Capo that escapes?
For if they meet thee, be thou
