Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/102

---

So saying, she vanished like a tricksy sprite;
And Alari turned, and in the gray twilight
Ruefully, carefully, he folded up
And bore away again his carven cup,
Deeming it sad and strange this winsome elf
Her love should yield to any but himself.

Soon to the farm came suitor number two,
A keeper of wild horses from Sambu,²—
Veran, by name. About his island home
In the great prairies, where the asters bloom,
He need to keep a hundred milk-white steeds,
Who nipped the heads of all the lofty reeds.

A hundred steeds! Their long manes flowing free
As the foam-crested billows of the sea!
Wavy and thick and all unshorn were they;
And when the horses on their headlong way
Plunged all together, their dishevelled hair
Seemed the white robes of creatures of the air.

I say it to the shame of human kind:
Camargan³ steeds were never known to mind
The cruel spur more than the coaxing hand.
Only a few or so, I understand,
By treachery seduced, have halter worn,
And from their own salt prairies been borne;