Santen, I trust you! Then, while they are beating
Their brows, and with remorse her name repeating,
There at the farm where her home used to be,
Far from the unrest of the upper sea,
“Down in the peaceful blue we will abide,
My oh so pretty, alway side by side;
And you shall tell me of your Maries over,
Over, until with shells the great storms cover.”
Here the crazed weaver on the corse him threw,
And from the church arose the psalm anew.
“So, when penitents heart-broken
Sue for pardon at your door,
Flood their souls with peace unspoken,
White flowers of our briny moor!”
Endnotes
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Boston, U.S.A., Roberts Bros., 1872. ↩
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Lotus Farm, or Falabrego Mas. The word mas, meaning a farm or homestead, is used in the arrondissement of Arles and in Languedoc. Every mas has a distinctive name—Mas de la Font, Fountain Farm; Mas de l’Oste, Host Farm; etc. The falabrego is the fruit of a species of lotus, called in French micoculier. (It is the Celtis australis of Linnaeus; and nearly related to, if not identical with, Celtis occidentalis, the sugar-berry of our Northern woods, remarkable for the delicate texture of its foliage, and singularly rich crimson color of its tiny fruit. —Am. Tr.) ↩
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La Crau, from the Greek κρᾶνρος, arid, is a vast stony plain, bounded on the north by the Alpines (Lower Alps), on the east by the meres of Martigue, west by the Rhône, and south by the sea. It is the Arabia Petraea of France. ↩
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Magalouno. Of this city, formerly a Greek colony, nothing now remains but a single church in ruins. ↩
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Li Baus, in French Les Baux, is a ruined town, formerly the capital of the princely house of Baux. It is three leagues from Arles, on the summit of the Alpines; and, as the name of this poetical locality occurs often in the poem, the following description from Jules Canonge’s History of the town of Baux, in Provence, may interest the reader:—
“At length there opened out before me a narrow valley. I bowed to the remains of a stone cross that sanctify the way; and, when I raised my eyes, they were riveted in astonishment on a set of towers and walls on the top of a rock, the like of which I had never before seen, save in works in which the genius of painting had been inspired by the most fabulous imaginings of Ariosto. But, if my surprise was great at the first aspect, it was doubly so when I reached an eminence, whence the whole town was displayed to view. It was a spectacle of desolate grandeur, such as a perusal of the Prophets presents to the mind. It was something I had never suspected the existence of—a town almost monolithite. Those who first had the idea of inhabiting the rock had hewn them a shelter out of its sides. This novel mode of architecture was plainly approved of by their successors; for soon from the vast compact mass a town issued, like a statue from a block touched by the wand of Art. An imposing town, with fortifications, chapels, and hospitals—a town in which man seemed to have eternalized his habitation. The dominion of the city was extensive, and brilliant feats of arms have secured for it a noble place in history; but it has proved no more enduring than many others less-solidly constituted.”
The action of the poem begins at the foot of these ruins. ↩
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Sheet spread to catch the olives as they are shaken from the trees. ↩
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Valabrègo, a village on the left bank of the Rhône, between Avignon and Tarascon. ↩
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Font Vièio (the Old Woman’s Well), a village in one of the valleys of the Alpines near Arles. ↩
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Martigau, an inhabitant of Martigue, a curious Provençal town inhabited almost solely by fishermen, built on some narrow islands, intersected by salt lakes and channels of the sea, by way of streets, which has occasioned it to be surnamed La Venire Provençale. It was the birthplace of Gerard Tenque (Thom or Tung), the founder of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. ↩
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“When Martha span,” a proverbial expression signifying, “in the good old days,” and alluding to Martha the hostess of Christ, who, after having, according to the legend, delivered Tarascon from a monster that ravaged its territory, ended her days in these parts. She is said to have inhabited a small house on the banks of the Rhône, at the door of which she used to sit, surrounded by her neophytes, and modestly ply her spinning-wheel. ↩
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The Aster trifolium, common on the marshes of the South. ↩
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Li garrigo, swamps or barren lands where only the agarrus, or dwarf-oak, grows. ↩
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Li Santo is the Provençal name of a small town of 543 inhabitants situated on the island of Camargue, between the mouths of the Rhône. In obedience to a poetical and very venerable tradition, an innumerable host of pilgrims from every part of Provence and lower Languedoc assemble at this place every 25th of May. The tradition—which will be found very fully detailed in the eleventh canto of the poem—is, briefly, as follows: After the crucifixion, the Jews compelled some of the most ardent disciples to enter a dismantled ship, and consigned them to the mercy of the waves. The scene is thus described in an ancient French canticle:—
Les Juifs
Entrez, Sara, dans la nacelle,
Lazare, Marthe, et Maximin,
Cléon, Trophime, Saturnin,
Les trois Maries et Marcelle,
Eutrope et Martial, Sidoine avec Joseph (d’Arimathée)
Vous peirez dans cette nef.
