“And wet with dew as ever, I the men
First summoned briskly to their toil again,
And then myself, my sleeves uprolling gayly,
Bent me to mine own task, as I do daily;
But at the first stroke wounded thus my hand,—
A thing which hath not happened, understand,
“For thirty years.” His fingers then he showed,
And the deep gash, wherefrom the blood yet flowed.
Then groaned, more piteously than before,
Mirèio’s parents; while a lusty mower,
One Jan Bouquet, a knight of La Tarasque
From Tarascon, a hearing rose to ask.
A rough lad he, yet kind and comely too.
None with such grace in Condamino threw
The pike and flag, and never merrier fellow
Sang Lagadigadèu’s ritournello
About the gloomy streets of Tarascon,
When, once a year, they ring with shout and song,
And brighten up with dances and are blithe.
He might have been a master of the scythe,
Could he have held the straight, laborious path;
But, when the fête-days came, farewell the swath,
And welcome revels underneath the trees,
And orgies in the vaulted hostelries,
And bull-baitings, and never-ending dances!
A very roisterer he who now advances,
With, “As we, master, in long sweeps were mowing,
I hailed a nest of francolines, just showing
Under a tuft of tares; and, as I bent
Over the pendent grass, with the intent
“To count the fluttering things, what do I see
But horrible red ants—oh, misery!—
In full possession of the nest and young!
Three were then dead. The rest, with vermin stung,
Their little heads out of the nest extended,
As though, poor things, they cried to be defended;
“But a great cloud of ants, more venemous
Than nettles, greedy, eager, furious,
Them were o’erwhelming even then; and I,
Leaning upon my scythe right pensively,
Could hear, far off, the mother agonize
Over their cruel fate, with piteous cries.”
This tale of woe, following upon the other,
Is a lance-thrust to father and to mother:
The worst foreboding seemeth justified.
Then, as a tempest in the hot June-tide,
Gathering silently, ascends the air,
The weather darkening ever, till the glare
Of lightning shows in the north-east, and loud
Peal follows peal, another left the crowd,
One Lou Marran. It was a name renowned
In all the farms when winter-eves came round,
And labourers, chatting while the mules were stalled
And pulling lucerne from the rack, recalled
What things befell when first this man was hired,
Until the lights for lack of oil expired.
Seed-time it was, and every other man
Was opening up his furrow save Marran;
Who, hanging back, eyed coulter, tackle, share,
As he the like had seen not anywhere.