Are only trial sharp and weary woe.
“And here below the purest waters ever
Are bitter on the lips of the receiver;
The worm is born within the fruit alway;
And all things haste to ruin and decay.
The orange thou hast chosen, out of all
The basket’s wealth, shall one day taste as gall.
“And in thy world, Mirèio, they who seem
To breathe, sigh only. And should any dream
Of drinking at the founts that run not dry,
Anguish alone such bitter draught will buy.
So must the stone be broken evermore,
Ere thou extract the shining silver ore.
“Happy is he who cares for others’ woe,
And toils for men, and wearies only so;
From his own shoulders tears their mantle warm,
Therein to fold some pale and shivering form;
Is lowly with the lowly, and can waken
Fire-light on cold hearths of the world-forsaken.
“Hark to the sovereign word, of man forgot,
‘Death too is Life;’ and happy is the lot
Of the meek soul and simple—he who fares
Quietly heavenward, wafted by soft airs;
And lily-white forsakes this low abode,
Where men have stoned the very saints of God.
“And if, Mirèio, thou couldst see before thee,
As we from empyrean heights of glory,
This world; and what a sad and foolish thing
Is all its passion for the perishing,
Its churchyard terrors—then, O lambkin sweet,
Mayhap thou wouldst for death and pardon bleat!
“But, ere the wheat-ear hath its feathery birth,
Ferments the grain within the darksome earth—
Such ever is the law; and even we,
Before we wore our crowns of majesty,
Drank bitter draughts. Therefore, thy soul to stay,
We’ll tell the pains and perils of our way.”
Paused for a moment, then, the holy three.
The waves, being fain to listen, coaxingly
Had flocked along the ocean sand; the pines
Unto the rustling water-weeds made signs;
And teal and gull beheld, with deep amaze,
Peace on the restless heart of Vacarès;
The sun and moon, afar the desert o’er,
Bow their great crimson foreheads, and adore;
And all Camargue—salt-sown, forsaken isle—
Seems thrilled with sacred expectation; while
The saints, to hearten for her mortal strife
Love’s martyr, tell the story of their life.
Canto XI
The Saints
“The cross was looming yet, Mirèio,
Aloft on the Judaean mount of woe,
Wet with the blood of God; and all the time
Seemed crying to the city of the crime,
‘What hast thou done, thou lost and slumbering—
What hast thou done, I say, with Bethlehem’s King?’
“The angry clamours of the streets were stayed:
Cedron alone a low lamenting made
Afar; and Jordan rolled a gloomy tide,
Hasting into the desert, there to hide
The overflowings of his grief and rage
’Mid terebinth and lentisk foliage.
“And all the poorer folk were heavy-hearted,
Knowing it was the Christ who had departed,
First having opened his own prison-door,
On friends and followers to look once more,
The sacred keys unto St. Peter given,
And, like an eagle, soared away to heaven.
“Oh! then in Jewry woe and weeping were
For the fair Galilean carpenter—
Him who His honeyed parables distilled
Over their hearts, and fainting thousands filled
Upon the hillsides with unleavened bread,
And healed the leper and revived the dead.
“But scribes and kings and priests, and all the horde
Of sacrilegious vendors whom the Lord
Had driven from his house, their hatred uttered,
‘And who the people will restrain,’ they muttered,
‘Unless in all the region round about
The glory of this cross be soon put out?’
“So raged they, and the martyrs testified:
Stephen the first was stoned until he died,
James with the sword was slain, and many a one
Cruelly crushed beneath a weight of stone.
Yet, dying, all bear record undismayed:
‘Christ Jesus is the Son of God!’ they said.
“Then us, brothers and sisters of the slain,
Who him had followed in a loving train,
They thrust into a crazy bark; and we,
Oarless and sailless, drifted out to sea.
We women sorely wept, the men their eyes
Anxiously lifted to the lowering skies.
“Palaces, temples, olive-trees, we saw—
Swiftly, oh swiftly!—from our gaze withdraw,
All saving Carmel’s rugged crests, and those
But as a wave on the horizon rose.
When suddenly a sharp cry toward us drifted.
We turned, and saw a maid with arms uplifted.
“ ‘Oh, take me with you!’ cried she in distress;
‘Oh, take me in the bark, my mistresses,
With you! I, too, must die for Jesus’ sake!’
It was our handmaid Sarah thus who spake.
Up there in heaven, whither she is gone,
She shineth sweetly as an April dawn!
“Seaward before the wind our vessel drave.
Then God a thought unto Salome gave:
Her veil upon the foamy deep she threw—
Oh, wondrous faith!—and on the water, blue
And white commingling wildly, it sustained
The maid until our fragile craft she gained,
“To her as well the strong breeze lending aid.
Now saw we in the hazy distance fade,
Hill-top by hill-top, our dear native land;
The sea encompassed us on every hand;
And a sharp home-sickness upon us fell,
The pangs whereof he who hath felt may tell.
“So must we say farewell, O sacred shore!
O doomed Judaea, farewell evermore!
Thy just are banished, thy God crucified!
Henceforth let serpents in thy halls abide;
And wandering lions, tawny, terrible,
Feed on thy vines and dates. Farewell! farewell!
“The gale had grown into a tempest now:
The vessel fled before it. On the prow
Martial was kneeling, and Saturnius:
While, in his mantle folded, Trophimus
The aged saint silently meditated;
And Maximin the bishop near him waited.
“High on the main-deck Lazarus held his place.
There was an awful pallor on his face—
Hues of the winding-sheet and of the grave.
He seemed to face the anger of the wave.
Martha his sister to his side had crept,
And Magdalene behind them cowered and wept.
“The slender bark, pursued of demons thus,
Contained, beside, Cléon, Eutropius,
Marcellus, Joseph of Arimathea,
Sidonius. And sweet it was to hear
The psalms they sang on the blue waste of sea,
Leaned o’er the tholes. Te Deum, too, said we.
“How rushed the boat the sparkling billows by!
E’en yet that sea seems present to the eye.
The breeze, careering, on the waters hurled,
Whereby the snowy spray was tossed and whirled,
And lifted in light wreaths into the air,
That soared like souls aloft, and vanished there.
“Out of the waves at morning rose the Sun,
And set therein when his day’s course was run.
Mere waifs were we upon the briny plain,
The sport of all the winds that scour the main;
Yet of our God withheld from all mischance,
That we might bear His gospel to Provence.
“At last there
