Upspringing with clasped hands and utterance wild,
“Your speech is an atrocious insult, child!
Your love’s a thorn that long hath stung us deep.
Alari, the owner of a thousand sheep,
You sent away; and keeper Veran too,
Disgusted with your scorn, his suit withdrew;
“Also the wealthy herdsman, Ourrias,
You treated as a dog and a scapegrace!
Tramp through the country with your beggar, then!
Herd with strange women and with outcast men!
And cook your pot with fortune-telling crones
Under a bridge mayhap, upon three stones.
“Go, gypsy, you are free!” the mother said;
Nor stayed Ramoun her pitiless tirade,
Though his eye like a taper burned. But now
The lightning flashed under his shaggy brow,
And his wrath brake, all barriers overbearing,
Like swollen torrent down a mountain tearing.
“Your mother’s right!” he said. “Go! travel yonder,
And take the tempest with you where you wander!
Nay, but you shall not! Here you shall remain,
Though I should bind you with an iron chain,
Or hold like a rebellious jumart, look!
Dragged by the nostrils with an iron hook!
“Yea, though you pine with sickly melancholy,
Till from your cheeks the roses perish wholly,
Or fade as snow fades when the sun is hot
On the hill-sides in spring, go shall you not!
And mark, Mirèio! Sure as the hearth’s ashes
Rest on that brick, and sure as the Rhone dashes
“Above its banks when it is overfull,
And sure as that’s a lamp, and here I rule,
You’ll see him never more!” The table leapt
Beneath his fist. Mirèio only wept.
Her heavy tears like dew on smallage rain,
Or grapes o’er ripe before a hurricane.
“And who,” resumed the old man, blind with rage,—
“Curse it!—I say, who, Ambroi, will engage
Thou didst not with the younger ruffian plot
This vile abduction, yonder in thy cot?”
Then Ambroi also sprang infuriate,—
“Good God!” he cried, “we are of low estate;
“But let me tell you that our hearts are high!
No shame, no stain, is honest poverty!
I’ve served my country forty years or more
On shipboard, and I know the cannon’s roar,
So young that I could scarce a boat-hook swing
When on my first cruise I went wandering.
“I’ve seen Melinda’s empire far away,
And with Suffren have haunted India,
And done my duty over all the world
In the great wars, where’er our flag unfurled
That southern chief who passed his conquering hand
With one red sweep from Spain to Russian land,
“And at whose drum-beat every clime was quaking
Like aspen-tree before the tempest shaking;
Horrors of boarding, shipwreck’s agonies,—
These have I known, and darker things than these,
Days than the sea more bitter. Being poor,
No bit of motherland might I secure.