“Cante uno chato de Prouvènço, Dins lis amour de la jouvènço, A travès da la Crau, vers la mar, dins li bla, Umble escoulan d’ou grand Oumero, Iéu la vole segui. Coume èro Rèn qu’uno chato de Prouvènço, En foro de la Crau se n’es gaire parla. Emai soun front noun lusiguèsse Que de jouinesso; emai n’agùesse Ni diadèmo d’or ni mantèu de Damas, Vole qu’en glòri fugue aussado Coune uno rèino, e caressado Pèr nosto lengo mespresado Car cantan que pèr vautre, o pastre e gènt di mas!” Or thus:-- “A maiden of Provence I sing: I tell the love-tale of her spring, Across La Crau’s wide wheat-fields follow her to the sea. Mine be the daring aspiration To sing of her in Homer’s fashion, My lady of the lowly station, Unknown beyond the prairies of lone La Crau was she. What though her brow was never crowned Save with the youth that rayed it round? What though she bore no golden crown and wore no damask cloak? Yet I would have her raised in glory As a queen is, and set before me In our poor speech to tell her story, Because I sing for you alone, shepherds and farmer-folk!” To me the thought of keeping this up for twelve cantos was simply appalling. Even in my trial stanzas, as will be seen, I had sacrificed many of the feminine rhymes; and I am now inclined to think, though I speak under correction, that Mistral himself and his followers availed themselves pretty liberally of the license which the classic Troubadours are well known to have employed, of manipulating their final syllables more or less in order to make them rhyme. The measure finally adopted--ten-syllabled iambic lines with consecutive rhymes, usually masculine but sometimes feminine--was essentially the same as that employed by William Morris in the “Earthly Paradise.” That beautiful work was then new, and very popular in America, and it seemed, and I own that to me it seems still, to present almost the ideal of English narrative poetry. But I broke my version into stanzas of six lines, by way, I suppose, of making it look more like the original.