They’ll drag thee with them into the abyss!”
“Trau-de-la-Capo! What may that be, pray?”
“I’ll tell thee, lady, as we pick our way
Over the stones.” And forthwith he began:
“Once was a treading-floor that overran
With wealth of sheaves. To-morrow, on thy ways,
Thou’lt pass, upon the riverside, the place.
“Trod by a circle of Camargan steeds,
The tall sheaves have been yielding up their seeds
To the incessant hoofs, a month or more.
No pause, no rest; and, on the treading-floor,
Dusty and winding, still the eye perceives
A very mountain of untrodden sheaves.
“Also, the weather was so fiercely hot,
The floor would burn like fire; and rested not
The wooden forks that more sheaves yet supplied
While at the horses’ muzzles there were shied
Clusters of bearded ears unceasingly—
They flew as arrows from the cross-bow fly.
“And on St. Peter’s day and on St. Charles’
Rang, and rang vainly, all the bells of Arles:
There was no Sunday and no holiday
For the unhappy horses: but alway
The heavy tramp around the weary road,
Alway the pricking of the keeper’s goad,
“Alway the orders issued huskily,
As in the fiery whirlwind still stood he.
The greedy master of the treaders white
Had even muzzled them, in his despite.
And, when Our Lady’s80 day in August came,
The coupled beasts were treading, all the same,
“The pilèd sheaves, foam-drenched. Their livers clung
Fast to their ribs, and their jaws drivelling hung,
When suddenly an icy, northern gale
Smit, swept the floor—and God’s blasphemers pale.
It quakes! It parts! On a black cauldron’s brink
Now stand they, and their eyes with horror sink.
“Then the sheaves whirl with fury terrible.
Pitch-forkers, keepers, keepers-aids as well,
Struggle to save them; but they naught can do:
The van, the van-goats, and the mill-stones too,
Horses and drivers, treading-floor, and master
Are swallowed up in one immense disaster!”
“You make me shudder!” poor Mirèio said.
“Ah, but that is not all, my pretty maid!
Thou thinkest me a little mad, may be:
But on the morrow thou the spot wilt see;
And carp and tench in the blue water playing,
And, in the reeds, marsh-blackbirds roundelaying.
“But on Our Lady’s day, when mounts again
The fire-crowned sun to the meridian,
Lay thee down softly, ear to earth,” said he,
“And eye a-watch, and presently thou’lt see
The gulf, at first so limpid, will begin
To darken with the shadow of the sin;
“And slowly up from the unquiet deep
A murmuring sound, like buzzing flies, will creep;
And then a tinkling, as of tiny bells,
That soon into an awful uproar swells
Among the water-weeds! Like human voices
Inside an amphora the fearsome noise is!
“And then it is the trot of wasted horses
Painfully tramping round their weary courses
Upon a hard, dry surface, evermore
Echoing like a summer threshing-floor,
Whom drives a brutal keeper, nothing loth,
And hurries them with insult and with oath.
“But, when the holy sun is sinking low,
The blasphemies turn hoarse and fainter grow,
The tinkling dies among the weeds. Far off,
The limping, sorry steed is heard to cough;
And, on the top of the tall reeds a-swinging,
Once more the blackbirds begin sweetly singing.”
So, full of chat, and with his basket laden,
Travelled the little man before the maiden;
While the descending sun with rose invests
The great blue ramparts and the golden crests
Of the hill-range, peaceful and pure and high,
Blending its outline with the evening sky.
Seemed the great orb, as he withdrew in splendour,
God’s peace unto the marshes to surrender,
And to the great lake,81 and the olives gray
Of the Vaulungo, and the Rhône away
There in the distance, and the reapers weary,
Who now unbend, and quaff the sea-air, cheery.
Till the boy cries that far away he sees
The home-tent’s canvas fluttering in the breeze.
“And the white poplar, dear maid, seest thou?
And brother Not, who climbs it even now?
He’s there after cicalas, be thou sure;
Or to spy me returning o’er the moor.
“Ah, now he sees us! And my sister Zeto,
Who helped him with her shoulder, turns this way too;
And seems to tell my mother that she may
Put on the bouillabaisse82 without delay.
And mother also, I can see her leaning
Over the boat, and the fresh fish a-gleaning.”
Then, as the two made haste with one accord
To mount the dike, the lusty fisher roared,
“Now this is charming! Look this way, my wife!
Our little Andreloun, upon my life,
Will be the prince of fishers one day,” said he;
“For he has caught the queen of eels already!”
Canto IX
The Muster
All sorrowfully droop the lotus-trees;
And heart-sick to their hives withdraw the bees,
Forgetful of the heath with savoury sweet,
And with milk-thistle. Water-lilies greet
Kingfishers blue that to the vivary hie,
And “Have you seen Mirèio?” is their cry.
While Ramoun and his wife by the fireside
Are sitting, lost in grief, and swollen-eyed,
And at their hearts the bitterness of death.
“Doubtless,” they said, “her reason wandereth.
Oh, what a mad and wretched maid it is!
Oh, what a heavy, cruel downfall this!
“Oh, dire disgrace! Our beauty and our hope
So with the last of trampers to elope!
Fled with a gypsy! And who shall discover
The secret hole of this kidnapping lover,
Where he the shameless one concealèd hath?”
And, as they spake, they knit their brows in wrath.
Now came the cupbearer with ass and pannier,
And from the threshold, in his wonted manner,
“Good-morrow,” Jane. “I’m come,” he said, “to seek
The labourer’s lunch.”83 And Ramoun could but wreak
His anguish on him. “Go, you cursèd churl!
I’m as a cork-tree barked, without my girl!”
“Yet hark ye, cupbearer, upon your track
Across the fields like lightning go you back,
And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all
Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall
Their sickles, and their shepherds too,” said he,
“Forsake their flocks, and instant come to me!”
Then, fleeter than a goat, the faithful man
O’er stony fallow and red clover ran,
Threaded holm-oaks84 on long declivities,
Leaped o’er the roads along the base of these,
And now already scents the sweet perfume
Of new-mown hay, and the blue-tufted bloom
Of tall lucerne descries; and presently
The measured sweep of the long scythes hears he,
And lusty mowers bending in a row
Beholds, and grass by the keen steel laid low
In verdant swaths—ever a pleasant sight—
And children, and young maidens, with delight
Raking the hay and in cocks piling it;
While crickets, that before the mowers flit,
Hark to their singing. Also, farther on,
An
