Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/197

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Now came the cup-bearer with ass aad pannier,
And on the threshold, in his wonted manner,
Pausing, "Good-morrow, master fair!" he cried.
"I 'm come to fetch the lunch."¹—"Curse it!" replied
The poor old man. "Begone! Without my child,
I 'm like a cork-tree of its bark despoiled.

"Yet hark ye, cup-bearer, upon your track
Across the fields like lightning go you back,
And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all
Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall
Their sickles, and the shepherds too," said he,
"Forsake their flocks, and instant come to me!"

Then, fleeter than a goat, the faithful man
O'er stony fallow and red clover ran,
Threaded holm-oaks² on long declivities,
Leaped o'er the roads along the base of these,
And now already scents the sweet perfume
Of new-mown hay, and the blue-tufted bloom

Of tall lucerne descries; and presently
The measured sweep of the long scythes hears he,
And lusty mowers bending in a row
Beholds, and grass by the keen steel laid low
In verdant swaths,—ever a pleasant sight,—
And children, and young maidens, with delight