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(From Mirèio)
Translated by Harriet W. Preston
ONCE, in the wild woods of the Luberon, | |
| A shepherd kept his flock. His days were long; | |
| But when at last the same were wellnigh spent, | |
| And toward the grave his iron frame was bent, | |
| He sought the hermit of Saint Ouquèri, | 5 |
| To make his last confession piously. | |
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| Alone, in the Vaumasco valley lost, | |
| His foot had never sacred threshold crost, | |
| Since he partook his first communion. | |
| Even his prayers were from his memory gone; | 10 |
| But now he rose and left his cottage lowly, | |
| And came and bowed before the hermit holy. | |
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| “With what sin chargest thou thyself, my brother?” | |
| The solitary said. Replied the other, | |
| The aged man, “Once, long ago, I slew | 15 |
| A little bird about my flock that flew,— | |
| A cruel stone I flung its life to end: | |
| It was a wagtail, and the shepherds’ friend.” | |
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| “Is this a simple soul,” the hermit thought, | |
| “Or is it an impostor?” And he sought | 20 |
| Curiously to read the old man’s face | |
| Until, to solve the riddle, “Go,” he says, | |
| “And hang thy shepherd’s cloak yon beam upon, | |
| And afterward I will absolve my son.” | |
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| A single sunbeam through the chapel strayed; | 25 |
| And there it was the priest the suppliant bade | |
| To hang his cloak! But the good soul arose, | |
| And drew it off with mien of all repose, | |
| And threw it upward. And it hung in sight | |
| Suspended on the slender shaft of light! | 30 |
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| Then fell the hermit prostrate on the floor, | |
| “O man of God!” he cried, and he wept sore, | |
| “Let but the blessed hand these tears bedew, | |
| Fulfil the sacred office for us two! | |
| No sins of thine can I absolve, ’t is clear: | 35 |
| Thou art the saint, and I the sinner here!” | |
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