Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/200

174 And strip her mantle rich and odorous From off her breast, and, ever gaining thus As wolves gain on their prey, rob, hour by hour, Earth of her gold, and summer of her flower; While in the wake of each, in ordered line, Falls the loose grain, like tendrils of the vine.

And the sheaf-binders, ever on the watch, The dropping wheat in handfuls deftly catch, And underneath the arm the same bestow Until, so gathering, they have enow; When, pressing with the knee, they tightly bind, And lastly fling the perfect sheaf behind.

Twinkle the sickles keen like swarming bees, Or laughing ripple upon sunny seas Where flounders are at play. Erect and tall, With rough beards blent, in heaps pyramidal, The sheaves by hundreds rise. The plain afar Shows like a tented camp in days of war;

Even like that which once arose upon Our own Beaucaire, in days how long withdrawn! When came a host of terrible invaders, The great Simon and all the French crusaders, Led by a legate, and in fierce advance Count Raymond slaughtered and laid waste Provence.