AND now she passes | |
| Curlews in flocks asleep amid the grasses | |
| Under the oaks, who, roused from slumber soft, | |
| Arise in haste, and wing their flight aloft | |
| Over the sad and barren plain; and all | 5 |
| Together “Cour’li! cour’li! cour’li!” call, | |
| |
| Until the Dawn, with her dew-glittering tresses, | |
| From mountain-top to level slow progresses, | |
| Sweetly saluted by the tufted lark, | |
| Soaring and singing o’er the caverns dark | 10 |
| In the great hills, whose pinnacles each one | |
| Appear to sway before the rising sun. | |
| |
| Then was revealed La Crau, the bare, the waste, | |
| The rough with stones, the ancient, and the vast, | |
| Whose proud old giants, if the tale be true, | 15 |
| Once dreamed, poor fools, the Almighty to subdue | |
| With but a ladder and their shoulders brave; | |
| But He them ’whelmed in a destroying wave. | |
| |
| Already had the rebels dispossest | |
| The Mount of Victory of his tall crest, | 20 |
| Lifted with lever from its place; and sure | |
| They would have heaped it high upon Ventour, | |
| As they had piled the rugged escarpment | |
| They from the Alpine range had earlier rent. | |
| |
| But God his hand extended o’er the plain: | 25 |
| The northwest wind, thunder, and hurricane | |
| He loosed; and these arose like eagles three | |
| From mountain clefts and caverns and the sea, | |
| Wrapped in thick fog, with fury terrible, | |
| And on the marble pile together fell. | 30 |
| |
| Then were the rude Colossi overthrown; | |
| And a dense covering of pudding-stone | |
| Spread o’er La Crau, the desolate, the vast, | |
| The mute, the bare to every stormy blast; | |
| Who wears the hideous garment to this day. | 35 |
| Meanwhile Mirèio farther speeds away | |
| |
| From the home-lands, while the sun’s ardent glare | |
| Makes visible all round the shimmering air; | |
| And shrill cicalas, grilling in the grass, | |
| Beat madly evermore their tiny brass. | 40 |
| Nor tree for shade was there, nor any beast: | |
| The many flocks that in the winter feast | |
| |
| On the short, savory grasses of the moor, | |
| Had climbed the Alps, where airs are cool and pure, | |
| And pastures fadeless. Yet the maid doth fly | 45 |
| Under the pouring fire of a June sky,— | |
| Fly, fly, like lightning. Lizards large and gray | |
| Peep from their holes, and to each other say: | |
| |
| “She must be mad who thus the shingle clears, | |
| Under a heat that sets the junipers | 50 |
| A-dancing on the hills; on Crau, the sands.” | |
| The praying mantes lift beseeching hands, | |
| “Return, return, O pilgrim!” murmuring, | |
| “For God hath opened many a crystal spring; | |
| |
| “And shady trees hath planted, so the rose | 55 |
| To save upon your cheeks. Why, then, expose | |
| Your brow to the unpitying summer heat?” | |
| Vainly as well the butterflies entreat. | |
| For her the wings of love, the wind of faith, | |
| Bear on together, as the tempest’s breath | 60 |
| |
| White gulls astray over the briny plains | |
| Of Agui-Morto. Utter sadness reigns | |
| In scattered sheep-cots of their tenants left, | |
| And overrun with salicorne. Bereft | |
| In the hot desert, seemed the maid to wake, | 65 |
| And see nor spring nor pool her thirst to slake. | |
| |
