Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/147

] The fowlers, torch in hand, who bush and tree By river-side will beat right vigorously, Till all the birds at roost arise in haste, And, as by breath of smithy-bellows chased, Affrighted, rush until the net receive: So drave Taven the foul herd with her sieve

Into the outer darkness. With the same She circles traced, luminous, red as flame, And divers other figures. All the while, "Avaunt!" she cried, "ye locusts, ye who spoil The harvest! Quit my sight, or woe betide you! Workers of evil, in your burrows hide you!

"Since, by the pricking of your flesh, ye know The hills are still with sunshine all aglow, Go hang yourselves again on the rock-angles, Ye bats!" They flit. The clamor disentangles, And dies away. Then to the children spake The witch: "All birds of night themselves betake

"To this retreat what time shines the daylight On the ploughed land and fallow; but at night,— At night the lamps are lighted without hand In churches void and triply fastened, and The bells toll of themselves, and pavement stones Upstart, and tremble all the buried hones,