And then the young man is as inspired, and in impassioned, well-nigh extravagant language tells of his love for Mireio.  He is like a fig tree he once saw that grew thin and miserable out of a rock near Vaucluse, and once a year the water comes and the tree quenches its thirst, and renews its life for a year.  And the youth is the fig tree and Mireio the fountain.  “And would to Heaven, would to Heaven, that I, poor boy, that I might once a year, as now, upon my knees, sun myself in the beams of thy countenance, and graze thy fingers with a trembling kiss.”  And then her mother calls.  Mireio runs to the house, while he stands motionless as in a dream.

No resume or even translation can give the beauty of this canto, its brightness, its music, its vivacity, the perfect harmony between words and sense, the graceful succession of the rhymes and the cadence of the stanzas.  Elsewhere in the chapter on versification a reference is made to the mechanical difficulties of translation, but there are difficulties of a deeper order.  The Felibres put forth great claims for the richness of their vocabulary, and they undoubtedly exaggerate.  Yet, how shall we render into English or French the word embessouna when describing the fall of Mireio and Vincen from the tree.  Mistral writes:—­

    “Toumbon, embessouna, sus lou souple margai.”

Bessoun (in French, besson) means a twin, and the participle expresses the idea, clasped together like twins. (Mistral translates, “serres comme deux jumeaux.”) An expression of this sort, of course, adds little to the prose language; but this power, untrammelled by academic traditions, of creating a word for the moment, is essential to the freshness of poetic style.

What is to be praised above all in these two exquisite cantos is the pervading naturalness.  The similes and metaphors, however bold and original, are always drawn from the life of the speakers.  Meste Ambroi, declining at first to sing, says “Li mirau soun creba!” (The mirrors are broken), referring to the membranes of the locust that make its song.  “Like a scythe under the hammer,” “Their heads leaning together like two marsh-flowers in bloom, blowing in the merry wind,” “His words flowed abundantly like a sudden shower on an aftermath in May,” “When your eyes beam upon me, it seems to me I drink a draught of perfumed wine,” “My sister is burned like a branch of the date tree,” “You are like the asphodel, and the tanned hand of Summer dares not caress your white brow,” “Slender as a dragon-fly,” are comparisons taken at random.  Of Mireio the poet says, “The merry sun hath hatched her out,” “Her glance is like dew, her rounded bosom is a double peach not yet ripe.”

The background of the action is obtained by the simplest description, a cart casting the shadow of its great wheels, a bell now and then sounding afar off across the marshes, references to the owl adding its plaint to the song of the nightingale, to the crickets who stop to listen now and then, and the recurring verses about the “magnanarello” reminds us now and then, like a lovely leitmotiv, of the group of singing girls about the amorous pair.