A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/A Page from the Bible (Arsène Houssaye)
The rural sounds of eve were softly blending—
The fountain's murmur like a magic rhyme,
The bellow of the cattle homeward wending,
The distant steeple's melancholy chime;
The peasants' shouts that charms from distance borrow,
The greenfinch whirring in its amorous flight,
The cricket's chirp, the night-bird's song of sorrow,
The laugh of girls who beat the linen white.
The breeze scarce stirred the reeds beside the river,
The swallows saw their figures as they flew
In that clear mirror for a moment quiver,
Before they vanished in the clouds from view.
And schoolboys wilder than the winging swallows
Far from the master with his look severe,
Bounded like fawns, to gather weeds, marsh-mallows
And primrose blossoms to the young heart dear.
II
Along the path now rising and now dipping,
Sudden there came, as supple as a reed,
A blue-eyed girl, who balanced, lightly tripping,
An earthen pitcher, fair she was indeed!
Her brow was almost veiled, and in its beauty
Bent languid, while the waves of some day-dream
Passed o'er it—but her feet, still true to duty,
Glided unconscious to the accustomed stream.
The wind upon her shoulders smooth had scattered
Her brown hair with its streaks of shining gold.
A periwinkle—one—her undress flattered,
A rural ornament charming to behold.
Beside the fount from whence the clear stream slanted
Upon a stone she knelt, and looked above;
And then more joyously the bullfinch chanted
His canticle of sacred, sacred love.
III
Came by a mendicant, with no friends loving,
A branch of oak appeared his only friend;
His old frame trembled, and he looked as moving
Unto a grave that must his journeys end.
Upon the branches of a birch with sadness
His empty wallet carefully he hung,
Then o'er the waters murmuring in their gladness,
An eager longing gaze of thirst he flung.
He tried to drink, his efforts were beguiling,
The girl his trouble saw, and came in aid,
Offered her pitcher, and divinely smiling,
'Drink, O my father, drink,' she gently said.
It was a scene of old—my bosom bounded,
Years, centuries, seemed back again to roll;
And ere it set, the sun methought had rounded
The girl's pure forehead with an aureole.