His thought is ever pure and high; his lessons are lessons of love, of noble aims, of energy and enthusiasm.  He is full of love for the best in the past, love of his native soil, love of his native landscapes, love of the men about him, love of his country.  He is a poet of the “Gai Saber,” joyous and healthy, he has never felt a trace of the bitterness, the disenchantment, the gloom and the pain of a Byron or a Leopardi.  He is eminently representative of the race he seeks to glorify in its own eyes and in the world’s, himself a type of that race at its very best, with all its exuberance and energy, with its need of outward manifestation, life and movement.  An important place must be assigned to him among those who have bodied forth their poetic conceptions in the various euphonious forms of speech descended from the ancient speech of Rome.

In Provence, and far beyond its borders, he is known and loved.  His activity has not ceased.  His voice is still heard, clear, strong, hopeful, inspiring. Mireille is sung in the ruined Roman theatre at Aries, museums are founded to preserve Provencal art and antiquities, the Felibrean feasts continue with unabated enthusiasm.  Mistral’s life is a successful life; he has revived a language, created a literature, inspired a people.  So potent is art to-day in the old land of the Troubadours.  All the charm and beauty of that sunny land, all that is enchanting in its past, all the best, in the ideal sense, that may be hoped for in its future, is expressed in his musical, limpid, lovely verse.  Such a poet and such a leader of men is rare in the annals of literature.  Such complete oneness of purpose and of achievement is rare among men.

[Footnote 17:  See Revue de Paris, 15 avril, 1898.]

APPENDIX

We offer here a literal prose translation of the Psalm of Penitence.

THE PSALM OF PENITENCE

I

Lord, at last thy wrath hurleth its thunderbolts upon our foreheads, and in the night our vessel strikes its prow against the rocks.

Lord, thou cuttest us down with the sword of the barbarian like fine wheat, and not one of the cravens that we shielded comes to our defence.

Lord, thou twistest us like a willow wand, thou breakest down to-day all our pride; there is none to envy us, who but yesterday were so proud.

Lord, our land goeth to ruin in war and strife; and if thou withhold thy mercy, great and small will devour one another.

Lord, thou art terrible, thou strikest us upon the back; in awful turmoil thou breakest our power, compelling us to confess past evil.

II

Lord, we had strayed away from the austerity of the old laws and ways.  Virtues, domestic customs, we had destroyed and demolished.