Classic Poem

Mireille! O every heart wherein there stirs
Free wind of wide lands, clangor of old bells
Savour of mystical and fragrant tales
Mourns for Mireille. The silent worshipper
At sunset, inarticulate, who swells
With an ethereal voiceless breath the sails
Of far-away barquetos—thus am I
Mireille! Before thy history.

Out of a world of smoky belching fires
That foul the blue sky of the world—away
From the dull scream of might engines, and
The crash of iron cities,—hot desires
Of starving souls that knew thee not, Mireille—
From cynic heart and bitter word and hand
You breathe a half-heard song of old Provence
Mireille! Fresh minstrel of Romance.

I too know Avignon the mighty-walled
Have mused at dusk in cloistered St. Trophime
And roamed at night Beaucaire and Tarascon
With the old Trouveres, when the eucre called;
On Mont Major and Baux made feast in dream
With Rene and the warriors long agone
And kissed the Rano Jano's white white hand
Mireille! In your enchanted land.

O Sun Provencal, flaming with the stark
Pure fire of spirits of dead poets, high
In sapphire o'er the vast Camargue, wide-spread,
Your gory death-cloths hand—while the slow dark
Creeps up the East; when does the soul descry
Seaward the faint far country of the dead—
O Sun, thus die with every tragic day
For you have stricken fair Mireille.

O southern Moon! Who rests so lovingly
Each night, a thousand years, on ruined things—
Pale splendour lumined with dead virgin's breath
Touching with radiance mas and low airee
And the dim jasmine where the motteu sings—
Who wakes old castles garrisoned with Death
Weep Moon! and loosen tresses of star-fire
You led Mireille to her desire.