iambic pentameters hypercatalectic.  The absence of rhyme is the more noteworthy in that rhyme offers little difficulty in Provencal.  Doubtless the poet was pleased to show an additional claim to superiority for his speech over the French as a vehicle for poetic thought; for while on the one hand the rules of rhyme and hiatus give the poet writing in Provencal less trouble than when writing in French, on the other hand this poem proves that splendid blank verse may be written in the new language.

The plan of the poem is briefly as follows:  it describes the departure of a fleet of boats from Lyons, accompanies them down the river to Beaucaire, describes the fair and the return up the river, the boats being hauled by eighty horses; narrates the collision with a steamboat coming down the stream, which drags the animals into the water, setting the boats adrift in the current, destroying them and their cargo, and typifying as it were the ruin of the old traffic on the Rhone.  The river itself is described, its dangerous shoals, its beautiful banks, its towns and castles.  We learn how the boats were manoeuvred; the life on board and the ideas of the men are set before us minutely.  Legends and stories concerning the river and the places along the shores abound, of course; and into this general background is woven the tale of a Prince of Orange and a little maiden called the Anglore, two of the curiously half-real, half-unreal beings that Mistral seems to love to create.  The Prince comes on board the fleet, intending to see Orange and Provence; some day he is to be King of Holland, but has already sickened of court ceremonies and intrigues.

    “Uno foulie d’amour s’es mes en testo.”

This dreamy, imaginative, blond Prince is in search of a Naiade and the mysterious “swan-flower,” wherein the fair nymph is hidden.  This flower he wears as an emblem.  When the boatmen see it, they recognize it as the fleur de Rhone that the Anglore is so fond of culling.  The men get Jean Roche, one of their number, to tell the Prince who this mysterious Anglore is, and we learn that she is a little, laughing maiden, who wanders barefoot on the sand, so charming that any of the sailors, were she to make a sign, would spring into the water to go and print a kiss upon her little foot.  Not only is the Prince in search of a nymph and a flower, not only does he wish to behold Orange, he wishes also to learn the language in which the Countess of Die sang lays of love with Raimbaud of Orange.  He is full of thoughts of the olden days, he feels regret for the lost conquests.  “But why should he feel regret, if he may recover the sunny land of his forefathers by drinking it in with eager eyes!  What need is there of gleaming swords to seize what the eye shows us?” He cares little for royalty.

“Strongholds crumble away, as may be seen on all these hills; everything falls to ruin and is renewed.  But on thy summits, unchanging Nature, forever the thyme shall bloom, and the shepherds and shepherdesses frolic on the grass at the return of spring.”