“For what is life but a dream, a distant appearance, an illusion gliding on the water, which, fleeing ever before our eyes, dazzles us like a mirror flashing, entices and lures us on!  Ah, how good it is to sail on ceaselessly toward one’s desire, even though it is but a dream!  The time will come, it is near, perhaps, when men will have everything within their reach, when they will possess everything, when they will know and have proved everything; and, regretting the old mirages, who knows but what they will not grow weary of living!”

CHAPTER II

LIS ISCLO D’OR

The lover of poetry will probably find more to admire and cherish in this volume than in any other that has come from the pen of its author, excepting, possibly, the best passages of Mireio.  It is the collection of his short poems that appeared from time to time in different Provencal publications, the earliest dating as far back as 1848, the latest written in 1888.  They are a very complete expression of his poetic ideas, and contain among their number gems of purest poesy.  The poet’s lyre has not many strings, and the strains of sadness, of pensive melancholy, are almost absent.  Mistral has once, and very successfully, tried the theme of Lainartine’s Lac, of Musset’s Souvenir, of Hugo’s Tristesse d’Olympio; but his poem is not an elegy, it has not the intensity, the passion, the deep undertone of any of the three great Romanticists. La Fin dou Meissounie is a beautiful, pathetic, and touching tale, that easily brings a tear, and Lou Saume de la Penitenci is without doubt one of the noblest poems inspired in the heart of any Frenchman by the disaster of 1870.  But these poems, though among the best according to the feeling for poetry of a reader from northern lands, are not characteristic of the volume in general.  The dominant strain is energy, a clarion-call of life and light, an appeal to his fellow-countrymen to be strong and independent; the sun of Provence, the language of Provence, the ideals of Provence, the memories of Provence, these are his themes.  His poetry is not personal, but social.  Of his own joys and sorrows scarce a word, unless we say what is doubtless the truth, that his joys and sorrows, his regrets and hopes, are identical with those of his native land, and that he has blended his being completely with the life about him.  The volume contains a great number of pieces written for special occasions, for the gatherings of the Felibres, for their weddings.  Many of them are addressed to persons in France and out, who have been in various ways connected with the Felibrige.  Of these the greeting to Lamartine is especially felicitous in expression, and the following stanza from it forms the dedication of Mireio:—­

“Te counsacre Mireio:  eo moun cor e moun amo,
Es la flour de mis an;
Es un rasin de Crau qu’ eme touto sa ramo
Te porge un paisan.”