“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 Judæan 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.