Then Ramoun raised his head, and thus replied; “The great storm alway comes at harvest-tide. However well-advised, as we advance We must, poor souls, all stumble on mischance: I cannot say it plainer. Friends, I pray, Let each tell what he knows, without delay!” Lauren de Gout came forward first. Now he Had failed no single year since infancy His quivered sickle from the hills to bring Down into Arles when ears were yellowing. Brown as a church-stone, he, with weather-stain, Or ancient rock the sea-waves charge in vain. The sun might scorch, the north-west wind might roar, But this old king of reapers evermore Was first at work. And now with him there came Seven rough and stalwart boys who bore his name. Him with one voice the harvesters did make Their chief, and justly: therefore thus he spake: “If it be true that, when the dawning sky Is ruddy, there is rain or snow close by, Then what I saw this very morn, my master, Presageth surely sorrow and disaster. So may God stay the earthquake! But as night Fled westward, followed by the early light, “And wet with dew as ever, I the men First summoned briskly to their toil again, And then myself, my sleeves uprolling gayly, Bent me to mine own task, as I do daily; But at the first stroke wounded thus my hand,-- A thing which hath not happened, understand, “For thirty years.” His fingers then he showed, And the deep gash, wherefrom the blood yet flowed. Then groaned, more piteously than before, Mirèio’s parents; while a lusty mower, One Jan Bouquet, a knight of La Tarasque From Tarascon, a hearing rose to ask. A rough lad he, yet kind and comely too. None with such grace in Condamino threw The pike and flag, and never merrier fellow Sang Lagadigadèu’s ritournello About the gloomy streets of Tarascon, When, once a year, they ring with shout and song, And brighten up with dances and are blithe. He might have been a master of the scythe, Could he have held the straight, laborious path; But, when the fête-days came, farewell the swath, And welcome revels underneath the trees, And orgies in the vaulted hostelries, And bull-baitings, and never-ending dances! A very roisterer he who now advances, With, “As we, master, in long sweeps were mowing, I hailed a nest of francolines, just showing Under a tuft of tares; and, as I bent Over the pendent grass, with the intent “To count the fluttering things, what do I see But horrible red ants--oh, misery!-- In full possession of the nest and young! Three were then dead. The rest, with vermin stung, Their little heads out of the nest extended, As though, poor things, they cried to be defended;