[Illustration: THE CAMEO SERIES] Mirèio IN SAME SERIES. THE LADY FROM THE SEA. BY HENRIK IBSEN. A LONDON PLANE TREE. BY AMY LEVY. WORDSWORTH’S GRAVE. BY WILLIAM WATSON. IPHIGENIA IN DELPHI. BY RICHARD GARNETT. [Illustration: Remote La CRAU] Mirèio. _A PROVENÇAL POEM._ by FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL. Translated by Harriet Waters Preston. CAMEO SERIES T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQ. LONDON E.C. MDCCCXC _Frontispiece_ _by_ JOSEPH PENNELL. _To Lamartine._ [Illustration: text decoration] _Te consecre Mirèio: es moun cor e moun amo,_ _Es la flour de mis an._ _Es un raisin de crau qu’emé touto sa ramo,_ _Te porge un païsan._ * * * * * _I offer thee Mirèio: it is my heart and spirit,_ _The blossom of my years._ _A cluster of Crau grapes, with all the green leaves near it,_ _To thee a peasant bears._ _Preface to the English Edition._ [Illustration: text decoration] Thirty odd years have come and gone since the curious _litterateurs_ of Paris were excited and charmed by the apparition of Frédéric Mistral’s “Mirèio.” A pastoral poem in twelve cantos, composed in the dialect of the _Bouches du Rhône_, and first issued by an obscure bookseller at Avignon, it was produced before the great literary world with a parallel French version of the author’s own, very singular and rather _sauvage_ as French, but exceedingly bold, picturesque, and poetic, and the poem had the further advantage of a most eloquent and sympathetic introduction in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of September 15, 1859, by Saint-René Taillandier.