In golden speech;--her blue and heaving ocean; Her Mont Majour, that keeps the mills in motion,-- These with soft olives ever feeding fully; Her bitterns in the marshes booming dully. One thing alone, thou lovely, dusky town, The child forgat,--of all thy charms the crown; He said not, fruitful Arles, that thy fine air Gives to thy daughters beauty rich and rare, As grapes to autumn, or as wings to bird, Or fragrance to the hill-sides. Him had heard The country maiden, sadly, absently. But now, “Bright boy, wilt thou not go with me?” She said; “for, ere the frogs croak in the willow, My foot must planted be beyond the billow. Come with me! I must o’er the Rhone be rowed, And left there in the keeping of my God!” “Now, then,” the urchin cried, “thou poor, dear lady, Thou art in luck! for we are fishers,” said he; “And thou shalt sleep under our tent this night, Pitched in the shadow of the poplars white, So keeping all thy pretty clothing on; And father, with the earliest ray of dawn, In our own little boat will put thee o’er!” But she, “Do not detain me, I implore: “I am yet strong enough this night to wander.” “Now God forbid!” was the lad’s prompt rejoinder: “Wouldst thou see, then, the crowd of sorry shapes From the Trau-de-la-Capo that escapes? For if they meet thee, be thou sure of this,-- They’ll drag thee with them into the abyss!” “Trau-de-la-Capo! What may that be, pray?” “I’ll tell thee, lady, as we pick our way Over the stones.” And forthwith he began: “Once was a treading-floor that overran With wealth of sheaves. To-morrow, on thy ways, Thou’lt pass, upon the riverside, the place. “Trod by a circle of Camargan steeds, The tall sheaves have been yielding up their seeds To the incessant hoofs, a month or more. No pause, no rest; and, on the treading-floor, Dusty and winding, still the eye perceives A very mountain of untrodden sheaves. “Also, the weather was so fiercely hot, The floor would burn like fire; and rested not The wooden forks that more sheaves yet supplied While at the horses’ muzzles there were shied Clusters of bearded ears unceasingly,-- They flew as arrows from the cross-bow fly. “And on St. Peter’s day and on St. Charles’ Rang, and rang vainly, all the bells of Arles: There was no Sunday and no holiday For the unhappy horses: but alway The heavy tramp around the weary road, Alway the pricking of the keeper’s goad, “Alway the orders issued huskily, As in the fiery whirlwind still stood he. The greedy master of the treaders white Had even muzzled them, in his despite. And, when Our Lady’s day in August came, The coupled beasts were treading, all the same,