Page:Mistral - Mirèio. A Provençal poem.djvu/52

 CANTO II.

THE LEAF-PICKING.

 ING, magnarello,$1$ merrily, As the green leaves you gather! In their third sleep$2$ the silk-worms lie, And lovely is the weather. Like brown bees that in open glades From rosemary gather honey, The mulberry-trees swarm full of maids, Glad as the air is sunny!

It chanced one morn—it was May's loveliest— Mirèio gathered leaves among the rest. It chanced, moreover, on that same May morning, The little gypsy, for her own adorning, Had cherries in her ears, for rings, suspended, Just as our Vincen's footsteps thither tended.

Like Latin seaside people everywhere, He wore a red cap on his raven hair, With a cock's feather gayly set therein; And, prancing onward, with a stick made spin The flints from wayside stone-heaps, and set flying The lazy adders in his pathway lying.