“‘France, take thy sister by the hand!’ So saith
Our land’s last king, he drawing near to death.
‘On the great work the future hath in store,
Together counsel take! Thou art the more
Strong; she, the more fair: and rebel night
Before your wedded glory shall take flight.’
“This did Renè. Therefore we sought the king,
As on his feathers he lay slumbering,
And showed the spot where long our bones had lain;
And he, with bishops twelve and courtly train,
Came down into this waste of sand and waves,
And found, among the salicornes, our graves.
“Adieu, dear Mirèio! The hour flies;
And, like a taper’s flame before it dies,
We see life’s light within thy body flicker.
Yet, ere the soul is loosed,—come quick, oh quicker,
My sisters!—we the hills of heaven must scale
Or ever she arrive within the veil.
“Roses and a white robe we must prepare!
She is love’s martyr and a virgin fair
Who dies to-day! With sweetest flowers blow,
Celestial paths! and on Mirèio
Shine saintly splendours of the heavenly host!
Glory to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!”
CANTO XII.
Death.
AS, when in orange-lands God’s day is ending,
The maids let fly the leafy boughs, and, lending
A helpful hand, the laden baskets lift
On head or hip, and fishing-boats adrift
Are drawn ashore, and, following the sun,
The golden clouds evanish, one by one;
As the full harmonies of eventide,
Swelling from hill and plain and river-side
Along the sinuous Argens,—airy notes
Of pastoral pipe, love-songs, and bleat of goats,—
Grow fainter, and then wholly fade away,
And sombre night falls on the mountains gray;
Or as the last sigh of an anthem soft,
Or dying organ-peal, is borne aloft
O’er some old church, and on the wandering wind
Passes afar,—so passed the music twined
Of the three Maries’ voices, heavenward carried.
For her, she seemed asleep; for yet she tarried
Kneeling: and was more fair than ever now,
So strange a freak of sunlight crowned her brow.
And here they who had sought her through the wild,
The aged parents, came, and found their child;
Yet stayed their faltering steps the portal under,
To gaze on her entranced with awe and wonder;