“Or watch the ever-varying Durance,
Now like some fierce and ravenous goat advance
Devouring banks and bridges; now demure
As maid from rustic well who bears her ewer,
Spilling her scanty water as she dallies,
And every youth along her pathway rallies.’
So spake her sweet Provençal majesty,
And rose with brimful apron, and put by
Her gathered treasure. Two more maids were there,
Twin sisters, the one dark, the other fair,—
Azaläis, Viòulano. The stronghold
Of Estoublon sheltered their parents old.
And oft these two to Lotus Farmstead came;
While that mischievous lad, Cupid by name,
Who loves to sport with generous hearts and tender,
Had made the sisters both their love surrender
To the same youth. So Azaläis said,—
The dark one,—lifting up her raven head:
“Now, damsels, play awhile that I were queen.
The Marseilles ships, the Beaucaire meadows green.
Smiling La Ciotat, and fair Salon,
With all her almond trees, to me belong.
Then the young maids I’d summon by decree,
From Arles, Baux, Barbentano, unto me.
“‘Come, fly like birds!’ the order should be given;
And I, of these, would choose the fairest seven,
And royal charge upon the same would lay,
The false love and the true in scales to weigh.
And then would merry counsel holden be;
For sure it is a great calamity
“That half of those who love, with love most meet,
Can never marry, and their joy complete.
But when I, Azaläis, hold the helm,
I proclamation make, that in my realm
True lovers wounded in their cruel sport
Shall aye find mercy at the maiden’s court.
“And if one sell her robe of honour white,
Whether it be for gold or jewel bright,
And if one offer insult, or betray
A fond heart, unto such as these alway
The high court of the seven maids shall prove
The stern avenger of offended love.
“And if two lovers the same maid desire,
Or if two maids to the same lad aspire,
My council’s duty it shall be to choose
Which loves the better, which the better sues,
And which is worthier of a happy fate.
Moreover, on my maidens there shall wait
“Seven sweet poets, who from time to time
Shall write the laws of love in lovely rhyme
Upon wild vine-leaves or the bark of trees;
And sometimes, in a stately chorus, these
Will sing the same, and then their couplets all
Like honey from the honey-comb will fall.”
So, long ago, the whispering pines among,
Faneto de Gautèume may have sung,
When she the glory of her star-crowned head
On Roumanin and on the Alpines shed;
Or Countess Dio, of the passionate lays,
Who held her courts of love in the old days.