“But priests and maids, my beauty, ne’er can tell, The saw affirms, the land where they may dwell And eat their bread.”--“Let mine but eaten be With him I love: that were enough,” said she, “To lure me from the home-nest to remove.” “If that be so, sweet one, give me thy love!” “Thy suit,” Mirèio said, “mayhap I’ll grant! But first, young man, yon water-lily plant Will bear a cluster of columbine grapes. Yon hills will melt from all their solid shapes, That goad will flower, and all the world will go In boats unto the citadel of Baux!” CANTO V. _The Battle._ Cool with the coming eve the wind was blowing, The shadows of the poplars longer growing; Yet still the westering sun was two hours high, As the tired ploughman noted wistfully,-- Two hours of toil ere the fresh twilight come, And wifely greeting by the door at home. But Ourrias the brander left the spring, The insult he had suffered pondering. So moved to wrath was he, so stung with shame, The blood into his very forehead came; And, muttering deadly spite beneath his teeth, He drave at headlong gallop o’er the heath. As damsons in a bush, the stones of Crau Are plentiful; and Ourrias, fuming so, Would gladly with the senseless flints have striven, Or through the sun itself his lance have driven. A wild boar from its lair forced to decamp, And scour the desert slopes of black Oulympe. Ere turning on the dogs upon his track, Erects the rugged bristles of his back, And whets his tusks upon the mountain oaks. And now young Vincen with his comely looks Must needs have chosen the herdsman’s very path, And meets him squarely, boiling o’er with wrath. Whereas the simple dreamer wandered smiling, His memory with a sweet tale beguiling, That he had heard a fond girl whispering Beneath a mulberry-tree one morn in spring. Straight is he as a cane from the Durance; And love, peace, joy, beam from his countenance. The soft air swells his loose, unbottoned shirt: His firm, bare feet are by the stones unhurt, And light as lizard slips he o’er the way. Oh! many a time, when eve was cool and gray, And all the land in shadow lay concealed, He used to roam about the darkling field, Where the chill airs had shut the tender clover; Or, like a butterfly, descend and hover Around the homestead of Mirèio; Or, hidden cleverly, his hiding show, Like a gold-crested or an ivy wren, By a soft chirrup uttered now and then. And she would know who called her, and would fly Swift, silent, to the mulberry-tree hard by, With quickened pulses. Fair is the moonlight Upon narcissus-buds in summer night, And sweet the rustle of the zephyr borne In summer eve over the ripening corn,