Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/204

---

"If it be true that, when the dawning sky
Is ruddy, there is rain or snow close by,
Then what I saw this very morn, my master,
Presageth surely sorrow and disaster.
So may God stay the earthquake! But as night
Fled westward, followed by the early light,

"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 Tarasque⁵
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,⁶ and never merrier fellow
Sang Lagadigadèu's ritournello⁷
About the gloomy streets of Tarascon,
When, once a year, they ring with shout and song,