Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/19

Rh, I have never hoped to surpass this unrhymed and unmeasured version, which needed, as it seemed to me, only a rhythmic form to render it worthy of the essentially musical original.

What that form should be, I found, when I came myself to think of translating "Mirèio" into verse, a question of no little difficulty. The Provençal measure is very un-English and alluring,—highly ornate in melody, abounding in double and triple rhymes, echoes and assonances; in general effect most like the elaborate Latin metres invented by the monks of the Middle Age, as Bernard of Cluny's in "De Contemptu Mundi." I can think of no English verse at all resembling it unless it be Whittier's in one of the best of his earlier poems,—Lines written at Hampton Beach:—

But this is far simpler than Mistral's. Hopeless as the notion seemed, I did make an attempt to transfer this florid measure to our sober English tongue, but soon became convinced that a few pages at most would exhaust its possibilities and render it wofully tedious. Only the plainest and most transparent of English metres could, I thought, endure and adapt itself with