Possibly no poet ever wrote as many lines to laud the language he was using.  Such lines abound in each volume he has produced.

    “Se la lengo di moussu
      Toumbo en gargavaio
    Se tant d’escrivan coussu
      Pescon de ravaio,
    Nautri, li bon Prouvencau
    Vers li serre li plus aut
      Enauren la lengo
      De nosti valengo.”

If the language of the messieurs falls among the sweepings, if so many comfortably well-off writers fish for small fry, we, the good Provencals, toward the highest summits, raise the language of our valleys.

The Sirventes addressed to the Catalan poets begins:—­

    “Fraire de Catalougno, escoutas!  Nous an di
    Que fasias peralin revieure e resplendi
          Un di rampau de nosto lengo.”

     Brothers from Catalonia, listen!  We have heard that ye cause one of
     the branches of our language to revive and flourish yonder.

In the same poem, the poet sings of the Troubadours, whom none have since surpassed, who in the face of the clergy raised the language of the common people, sang in the very ears of the kings, sang with love, and sang freely, the coming of a new world and contempt for ancient fears, and later on he says:—­

“From the Alps to the Pyrenees, hand in hand, poets, let us then raise up the old Romance speech!  It is the sign of the family, the sacrament that binds the sons to the forefathers, man to the soil!  It is the thread that holds the nest in the branches.  Fearless guardians of our beautiful speech, let us keep it free and pure, and bright as silver, for a whole people drinks at this spring; for when, with faces on the ground, a people falls into slavery, if it holds its language, it holds the key that delivers it from the chains.”

The final stanza of the poem, written in honor of Jasmin in 1870, is as follows:—­

“For our dead and our fathers, and our sacred rights as a people and as poets, that yesterday were trampled beneath the feet of the usurper, and, outraged, cried out, now live again in glory!  Now, between the two seas the language of Oc triumphs.  O Jasmin, thou hast avenged us!”

In the Rock of Sisyphus the poet says, “Formerly we kept the language that Nature herself put upon our lips.”

In the Poem to the Latin Race we read:—­

“Thy mother tongue, the great stream that spreads abroad in seven branches, pouring out love and light like an echo from Paradise, thy golden speech, O Romance daughter of the King-People, is the song that will live on human lips as long as speech shall have reason.”

Elsewhere we find:—­

“Oh, maintain thy historic speech.  It is the proof that always thou carriest on high and free, thy coat of arms.  In the language, a mystery, an old treasure is found.  Each year the nightingale puts on new plumage, but keeps its song.”