And drag her body o’er the rocks of Baux!”
As the unhappy soul lamented so,
Her tones were smothered by the cart’s rude shaking;
And the farm-labourers, a last look taking
To see if none were coming o’er the plain,
Turned slowly, sadly, to their toil again;
While swarms of gnats, the idle, happy things,
Filled the green walks with sound of humming wings.
Canto X
Camargue
Listen to me, good people of Provence,
Countrymen one and all, from Arles to Vence,
From Vanensolo even to Marseilles,
And, if the heat oppress you, come, I pray,
To Durancolo89 banks, and, lying low,
Hear the maid’s tale, and weep the lover’s woe!
The little boat, in Andreloun’s control,
Parted the water silent as a sole,
The while the enamoured maiden whom I sing,
Herself on the great Rhône adventuring,
Beside the urchin sat, and scanned the wave
Intently, with a dreamy eye and grave,
Till the boy-boatman spake: “Now knewest thou ever,
Young lady, how immense is the Rhône river?
Betwixt Camargue and Crau might holden be
Right noble jousts! That is Camargue!” said he;
“That isle so vast it can discern, I deem,
All the seven mouths of the Arlesian stream.”
The rose-lights of the morn were beauteous
Upon the river, as he chatted thus.
And the tartanes,90 with snowy sails outswelled,
Tranquilly glided up the stream, impelled
By the light breeze that blew from off the deep,
As by a shepherdess her milk-white sheep.
And all along the shore was noble shade
By feathery ash and silver poplar made,
Whose hoary trunks the river did reflect,
And giant limbs with wild vines all bedeckt
With ancient vines and tortuous, that upbore
Their knotty, clustered fruit the waters o’er.
Majestically calm, but wearily
And as he fain would sleep, the Rhône passed by
Like some great veteran dying. He recalls
Music and feasting in Avignon’s halls
And castles, and profoundly sad is he
To lose his name and waters in the sea.
Meanwhile the enamoured maiden whom I sing
Had leaped ashore; and the boy, tarrying
Only to say, “The road that lies before
Is thine! The Saints will guide thee to the door
Of their great chapel,” took his oars in hand,
And swiftly turned his shallop from the land.
Under the pouring fire of the June sky,
Like lightning doth Mirèio fly and fly.
East, west, north, south, she seems to see extend
One weary plain, savannas without end,
With glimpses of the sea, and here and there
Tamarisks lifting their light heads in air.
Golden-herb, samphire, shave-grass, soda—these
Alone grow on the bitter prairies,
Where the black bulls in savage liberty
Rejoice, where the white horses all are free
To roam abroad and breast the briny gale,
Or air surcharged with sea-fog to inhale.
But now o’er all the marsh, dazzling to view,
Soars an immeasurable vault of blue,
Intense, profound. The only living thing
A solitary gull upon the wing
Or hermit-bird whereof the shadow falls
Over the desert meres at intervals,
Or red-legged chevalier, or hern,91 wild-eyed
With crest of three white plumes upraised in pride.
But soon the sun so beats upon the plain
That the poor, weary wanderer is fain
To loose and lift her folded neckerchief,
So from the burning heat to find relief.
Yet grows the torment ever more and more;
The sun ascending higher than before,
Till, as a starvèd lion’s eye devours
The Abyssinian desert that he scours,
Yon lidless orb the very zenith gains
And pours a flood of fire o’er all the plains.
Now were it sweet beneath a beech to slumber!
Now, like a swarm of hornets without number—
An angry swarm, fierce darting high and low—
Or liks the hot sparks from a grindstone, grow
The pitiless rays; and Love’s poor pilgrim, worn
And gasping, and by weariness o’erborne,
Forth from her bodice draws its golden pin,
So that her panting bosom shows within.
All dazzling white, like the campanulas92
That bloom beside the summer sea, it was,
And, like twin-billows in a brooklet, full.
Anon, the solitary scene and dull
Loses a little of its sadness, and
A lake shows on the limit of the land—
A spacious lake, whose wavelets dance and shine—
While shrubs of golden-herb and jessamine93
On the dark shore appear to soar aloft
Until they cast a shadow cool and soft.
It seems to the poor maid a heavenly vision,
A heartening glimpse into the land elysian.
And soon, afar, by that blue wave she sees
A town with circling walls and palaces,
And fountains gay, and churches without end,
And slender spires that to the sun ascend,
And ships and lesser sailing-craft, sun-bright,
Entering the port; and the wind seemeth light.
So that the oriflambs and streamers all
Languidly round the masts arise and fall.
“A miracle!” the maiden thought, and now
Wipes the abundant moisture from her brow,
And, with new hope, toward the town doth fare,
Deeming the Maries’ tomb is surely there.
Alas! alas! be her flight ne’er so speedy,
A change will pass upon the scene. Already
The sweet illusion seems to fade and flit;
Recedes the vision as she follows it.
An airy show, the substance of a dream,
By spirit woven out of a sunbeam,
And all its fair hues borrowed from the sky—
The filmy fabric wavers presently,
And melts away, and like a mist is gone.
Bewildered by the heat, and quite alone,
Is left Mirèio: yet her way she keeps,
Toiling over the burning, yielding heaps
Of sand; over the salt-encrusted waste—
Seamed, swollen, dazzling to the eye—doth haste.
On through the tall marsh-grasses and the reeds
And rushes, haunted by the gnat, she speeds,
With Vincen ever in her thought. And soon,
Skirting the lonesome Vacarès lagoon,
She sees it loom at last in distance dim—
She sees it grow on the horizon’s rim—
The Saints’ white tower, across the billowy plain,
Like vessel homeward bound upon the main.
And, even at that blessèd moment, one
Of the hot shafts of the unpitying sun
The ill-starred maiden’s forehead pierced, and she
Staggered, death-smitten, by the glassy sea,
And dropped upon the sand. Weep, sons of Crau,
The sweetest flower in all the land lies low.
When, in a valley by the riverside,
Young turtle-doves a huntsman bath espied,
Some innocently drinking, others cooing,
He, through the copse-wood with his gun pursuing,
At the most fair takes alway his first aim—
The cruel sun had only done the same.
Now, as she lay in swoon upon the shore,
A swarm of busy gnats came hovering o’er,
Who seeing the white breast and fluttering breath,
And the poor maiden fainting to her death,
With ne’er a friendly spray of
