Mirèio/Canto VI
CANTO VI.
THE WITCH.
THE merry birds, until the white dawn showeth
Clear in the east, are silent every one.
Silent the odorous Earth until she knoweth
In her warm heart the coining of the Sun,
As maiden in her fairest robes bedight
Breathless awaits her lover and her flight.
Across La Crau three swineherds held their way
From St. Chamas the wealthy, whither they
Had to the market gone. Their herds were sold,
And o'er their shoulders pouches full of gold
Were hung, and by their hanging cloaks concealed:
So, chatting idly, they attained the field
Of the late strife. Suddenly one cried, "Hush!
Comrades, I hear a moaning in the bush."
"'Tis but a tolling hell," the rest averred,
"From Saint Martin's or from Maussano1 heard,
Or the north wind the dwarf-oak limbs a-swaying."
But, ere they spake, all were their steps delaying,
Arrested by so piteous a moan
It rent the very heart. And every one
Cried, "Holy Jesus! Here has been foul play!"
Then crossed themselves, and gently took their way
Toward the sound. Ah, what a sight there was!
Vincen, supine upon the stony grass,—
The grass blood-stained, the trampled earth besprent
With willow rods. His shirt to ribbons rent,
Stabbed in the breast, left on the moor alone,
Had lain the poor lad through the night now gone,
With but the stars to watch. But the dim ray
Of early dawn, as ebbed his life away,
Falling upon his lids had oped them wide.
Straightway the good Samaritans turned aside
From their home-path, stooped, and a hammock made
Of their three cloaks, thereon the victim laid,
Then bare him tenderly upon their arms
Unto the nearest door,—the Lotus-Farm's…
O friends,—Provençal poets brave and dear,
Who love my songs of other days to hear!
You, Roumanille, who blend with songs you sing
Tears, girlish laughter, and the breath of spring;
And you, proud Aubanel, who stray where quiver
The changing lights and shades of wood and river,
To soothe a heart oppressed by love's fond dream;
You, Crousillat, who your belovèd stream,
The bright Touloubro, make more truly famous
Than did the grim star-gazer Nostadamus;2
And you, Anselme, who see, half-sad, half-smiling,
Fair girls under the trellised arbors whiling
Their hours away; and you, my Paul, the witty,
And peasant Tavan, who attune your ditty
Unto the crickets' chirrup, while you peer
Wistful at your poor pickaxe; and most dear,
Adolphe Dumas, who, when Durance is deep
With his spring flood, come back your thoughts to steep,
And warm the Frenchman at Provençal suns,
'Twas you who met my own Mirèio once
At your great Paris,—met her tenderly,
Where she had flown, impetuous, daring, shy;
And last Garcin, brave son of a brave sire,
Whose soul mounts upward on a wind of fire;—
Upbear me with your holy breath as now
I climb for the fair fruit on that high bough!…
The swineherds paused at Master Ramoun's door,
Crying, "Good-morrow! Yonder, on the moor,
We found this poor lad wounded in the breast.
'Twere well that his sore hurt were quickly drest."
So laid their burden on the broad, flat stone.
They tell Mirèio, to the garden gone
To gather fruit, who, basket on her side,
Fled wildly to the spot. Thither, too, hied
The laborers all; but she, her basket falling,
Stretched forth her hands on Mother Mary calling.
"Vincen is bleeding! Ah, what have they done?"
Then, lovingly, the head of the dear one
She lifted, turned, and long and mutely gazed
As though with horror and with grief amazed,
Her large tears dropping fast. And well he knows
That tender touch to be Mirèio's,
And faintly breathes, "Pity, and pray for me,
Because I need the good God's company!"
"Your parched throat moisten with this cordial.3 Strive
To drink," old Ramoun said: "you will revive."
The maiden seized the cup, and drop by drop
She made him drink, and spake to him of hope
Till his pain lulled. "May God keep you alway
From such distress, and your sweet care repay!"
Said Vincen; and the brave boy would not tell
It was for her sake that he fought and fell;
But "Splitting osier on my breast," he said,
"The sharp knife slipped, and pierced me." Therewith strayed
His thought back to his love as bee to flower.
"The anguish on thy face, dear, in this hour
Is far more bitter than my wound to me.
The pretty basket that in company
We once began will be unfinished now.
Would I had seen it full to overflow,
"Dear, with thy love! Oh, stay! Life 's in thine eyes.
Ah, if thou couldst do something," the lad cries,
"For him,—the poor old basket-weaver there,—
My father, worn with toil!" In her despair,
Mirèio bathes the wound, while some bring lint,
And some run to the hills for healing mint.
Then the maid's mother spake: "Let four men rally,
And to the Fairies' Cavern,4 in the valley
They call Enter, bear up this wounded man.
The deadlier the hurt, the sooner can
The old witch heal. Scale first the cliffs of Baux,
And circling vultures the cave's month will show."
A hole flush with the rocks, by lizards haunted,
And veiled by tufts of rosemary thereby planted.
For ever, since the holy Angelus swells
In Mary's honor from the miaster-hells,
The antique fairies have been forced to hide
From sunlight, and in this deep cavern bide.
Strange, airy things, they used to flit about
Dimly, 'twixt form and substance, in and out:
Half-earthly made, to be the visible
Spirit of Nature; female made as well,
To tame the savagery of primal men.
But these were fair in fairies' eyes, and then
They loved: and so, infatuate, lifted not
Mortals unto their own celestial lot;
But, lusting, fell into bur low estate,
As birds fall, whom a snake doth fascinate,
From their high places. But, while thus I write,
The bearers have borne Vincen up the height.
A dim, straight passage led the cavern toward,
A rocky funnel where they gently lowered
The sufferer; and he did not go alone,—
Yet was Mirèio's self the only one
Who dared to follow down that awesome road,
Commending, as she went, his soul to God.
The bottom gained, they found a grotto cold
And vast; midway whereof a beldam old,
The witch Taven, sat silent, cronching lowly
As lost in thought and utter melancholy,
Holding a sprig of brome, and muttering,
"Some call thee devil's wheat, poor little thing,
"Yet art thou one of God's own signs for good!"
Therewith Mirèio, trembling where she stood,
Was fain to tell why they had sought her thus.
"I knew it!" cried the witch, impervious,
The brome addressing still, with bended head.
"Thou poor field-flower! The trampling flock," she said,
"Browse on thy leaves and stems the whole year long;
But all the more thou spreadest and art strong,
And north and south with verdure deckest yet."
She ceased. A dim light, in a snail-shell set,
Danced o'er the dank rock-wall in lurid search:
Here hung a sieve ; there, on a forkèd perch,
Roosted a raven, a white hen beside.
Suddenly, as if drunken, rose and cried
The witch, "And what care I whoe'er you be?
Faith walketh blindfold, so doth Charity,
Nor from her even tenor wandereth.
Say, Valabregan weaver, have you faith?"
"I have." Then wildly, their pursuit inviting,
Like a she-wolf her flanks with her tail smiting,
Darted the hag into a deeper shaft,
While the fowl cackled and the raven laughed
Before her footsteps ; and the boy and maid
Followed her through the darkness, sore afraid.
"Stay not!" she cried. "The time is now to gather
The mandrake!" And, fast holding one another,
Obedient to the voice the two crept on,
Through the infernal passage, till they won
A grotto larger than the rest. "Lo! now,
Lord Nostradamus' plant, the golden bough,
"The staff of Joseph and the rod of Moses!"
Thus crying, Taven a slander shrub discloses,
And, kneeling, with her chaplet crowns. Then said,
Arising, "We too must be garlanded
With mandrake;" and the plant in the rock's cleft
Of three fair sprays mysteriously bereft,
Herself crowned first, and next the wounded man,
And last the maid. Then, crying, "Forward!" ran
Down the weird way, before her footsteps lit
By shining beetles trooping over it.
Yet turned with a sage word,—"All paths of glory,
My children, have their space of purgatory!
"Therefore have courage! for we must, alas!
The terrors of the Sabatori5 pass."
And, while she spake, their faces cut they find,
And breathing stopped, by rush of keenest wind.
"Lie down!" she whispered hurriedly,—"lie low!
The triumph of the Whirlwind Sprites is now!"
Then fell upon them, like a sudden gale
Or white squall on the water fraught with hail,
A swarm of whirling, yelping, vicious things,
Under the fanning of whose icy wings
The mortals, drenched with sweat and struck with cold,
Stood shivering. "Away, ye over-bold,
"Ye spoilers of the harvest, unlicked whelps!"
Taven exclaimed. "Must we then use such helps
To the fair deeds we do? Yet, as by skill
The sage physician bringeth good from ill,
We witches, by our hidden arts, compel
Evil to yield its fruit of good as well.
"Naught's hid from us. For where the vulgar see
A stone, a whip, a stag, a malady,
We witches can the inner force divine
Like that which works under the scum of wine
In fermentation. Pierce the vat, you know,
A seething, boiling scum will outward flow.
"Find, if you can, the key of Solomon!
Or speak unto the mountain in its own
Dread language! It shall move at your behest,
And roll into the valley ere it rest."
Meanwhile they wended lower, and were 'ware
Of a small, roguish voice a-piping there,
Most like a goldfinch: "Our good granny spins,
And winds and spins, and then anew begins,
And thinks that she spins worsted night and day,
And ha! ha! gossip, she spins only hay!
Te! he! spin, Aunty, spin!" And long-drawn laughter,
Like whinnying of young colts, followed thereafter.
"Why, what can that be?" asked Mirèio,—
"The little voice that laughs and jeers us so?"
Again the childish treble came, "Te! he!
Who is this pretty mortal? Let us see!
We 'll raise the neckerchief a little bit:
Are nuts and pomegranates under it?"
Then the poor maid had nearly cried outright;
But the hag stayed her, "Here 's no cause for fright.
The singing, jeering thing is but a Glari:
Fantasti is his name, a sprightly fairy.
In his good mood he will your kitchen sweep,
Mind fire, turn roast, and a full hen's-nest keep.
"But what a marplot when he takes the whim!
He 'll salt your broth just as it pleaseth him,
Or blow your light out ere you 're half in bed!
Or, if to vespers you would go," she said,
"At great Saint Trophimus',6 gayly bedight,
He 'll hide your Sunday suit, or spoil it quite!"
"Hear!" shrieked the imp: "now hear the old hag talk!
'Tis like the creak of an ill-greasèd block!
No doubt, my withered olive," the thing said,
"I twitch the bedclothes off a sleeping maid
Sometimes at midnight, and she starts with fear
And trembles, and her breast heaves. Oh, I see her!"
And with its whinnying laugh the sprite was gone;
Then, for a brief space, as they journeyed on
Under the grots, the witcheries were stayed;
And in the gloomy silence, long delayed,
They heard the water drop from vaulted roof
To crystal ground. Now there had sat aloof,
Upon a ledge of rock, a tall, white thing,
Which rose in the half-light as menacing
With one long arm. Then stiff as a quartz rock
Stood Vincen; while, transported by the shock,
Mirèio would have leaped a precipice,
Had such been there. "Old scare-crow, what is this?
"What mean you," cried Taven, "by swaying so
Your limp head like a poplar to and fro?"
Then turning to the stricken twain, "My dears,
You know the Laundress? Oft-times she appears
On Mount Ventour, and then the common crowd
Are wont to take her for a long, white cloud.
"But shepherds, when they see her, pen their sheep.
The Laundress of destruction, who doth keep
The errant clouds in hand, is known too well.
She scrubs them with a strength right terrible;
Wringing out buckets full of rain, and flame.
And neatherds house their cattle at her name;
"And seamen, on the angry, losing wave,
Upon our Lady call, their craft to save."
Here drowned her speech a discord most appalling,
Rattling of latches, whimpering, caterwauling,
With uncouth words half-uttered intervening,
Whereof the devil only knows the meaning;
And brazen din through all the cave resounding,
As one were on a witch-caldron pounding.
Then whence those shrieks of laughter, and those wails
As of a woman in her pains? Prevails
Hardly amid the howl the beldam's speech,
"Give me a hand that I may hold you each,
"And let your magic garlands not be lost!"
Here were they jostled from their feet almost
By rush of something puffing, grunting, snorting,
Most like a herd of ghostly swine comporting.
On starlit winter-nights, when Nature slumbers
Under her snowy sheets, come forth in numbers
The fowlers, torch in hand, who bush and tree
By river-side will beat right vigorously,
Till all the birds at roost arise in haste,
And, as by breath of smithy-bellows chased,
Affrighted, rush until the net receive:
So drave Taven the foul herd with her sieve
Into the outer darkness. With the same
She circles traced, luminous, red as flame,
And divers other figures. All the while,
"Avaunt!" she cried, "ye locusts, ye who spoil
The harvest! Quit my sight, or woe betide you!
Workers of evil, in your burrows hide you!
"Since, by the pricking of your flesh, ye know
The hills are still with sunshine all aglow,
Go hang yourselves again on the rock-angles,
Ye bats!" They flit. The clamor disentangles,
And dies away. Then to the children spake
The witch: "All birds of night themselves betake
"To this retreat what time shines the daylight
On the ploughed land and fallow; but at night,—
At night the lamps are lighted without hand
In churches void and triply fastened, and
The bells toll of themselves, and pavement stones
Upstart, and tremble all the buried hones,
"And the poor dead arise and kneel to pray,
And mass is said by priests as pale as they.
Ask the owls else, who clamber down the steeple
To drain the lamps of oil; and if the people
Who thus partake of the communion
Be not all dead except the priests alone!
"What time the beldam jeers at February,7
Let women everywhere be wondrous wary,
Nor fall asleep on chairs for awful reason!
Shepherds as well, at yon uncanny season
Early your charges fold, an it mislike you
A spell should motionless and rigid strike you
"For seven years' time. The Fairies' Cavern, too,
Looses about these days its eerie crew.
Winged or four-footed, they o'er Crau disperse;
While, from their lairs aroused, the sorcerers
Gather, the farandoulo8 dance, and sup
An evil potion from a golden cup.
"The dwarf-oaks dance as well. Lord, how they trip it!
Meanwhile there 's Garamaude9 in wait for Gripet.10
Fie, cruel flirt! Ay, seize the carrion,
And claw her bowels out! Now they are gone,—
Nay, but they come again! And, oh, despair!
The monster stealing through the sea-kale there,
"The one who like a burglar crouched and ran,
Is Bambarouche, babe-stealing harridan.
Her wailing prey in her long claw she takes,
Lifts on her horny head, and off she makes.
And yon 's another! She 's the Nightmare-sprite
Comes down the chimney-flue at dead of night,
"And stealthy climbs upon the sleeper's breast,
Who, as with weight of a tall tower opprest,
Hath horrid dreams. Hi! What a hideous racket!
My dears, 'tis the foul-weather fiends who make it!
That sound of rusty hinges, groaning doors,
Is they who beat up fog upon the moors,
"And ride the winds that homestead-roofs uptear
And bear afar. Ha, Moon! What ails you there?
What dire indignity hath made you scowl
So red and large o'er Baux? 'Ware the dog's howl!
Yon dog can snap you like a cake, be sure!
He minds the filthy Demon of the Sewer!
"Now see the holm-oaks bend their heads like ferns,
And see that flame that leaps and writhes and burns.
It is St. Elmo's. And that ringing sound
Of rapid hoofs upon the stony ground
Is the wild huntsman riding over Crau."
Here hoarse and breathless paused the witch of Baux.
But straight thereafter, "Cover ears and eyes,
For the black lamb is bleating!" wildly cries.
"That basing lambkin!" Vincen dared to say;
But she, "Hide eyes and ears without delay!
Woe to the stumbler here! Sambuco's11 Path
Less peril than the black horn's passage hath.
"Tender his bleating, as you hear, and soft:
Thereby he lures to their destruction oft
The heedless Christians who attend his moan.
To them he shows the sheen of Herod's throne,
The gold of Judas, and the fatal spot
Where Saracens made fast the golden goat.
"Her they may milk till death, to hearts' content.
But, when they call for holy sacrament,
The black lamb only buts them savagely.
And yet, so evil is the time," quoth she,
"Unnumbered greedy souls that bait will seize,
Burn incense unto gold, then die as these!"
Now, while the white hen gave three piercing crows,
The eerie guide did to her guests disclose
The thirteenth grotto, and the last; and lo!
A huge, wide chimney and a hearth aglow,
And seven black tom-cats warming round the flame;
And, hanging from a hook above the same,
An iron caldron of gigantic size,
And underneath two fire-brands, dragon-wise
Belching blue flame. "Is it with these you brew,
Grandmother," asked the lad, "your magic stew?"
"With these, my son. They 're branches of wild vine:
No better logs for burning be than mine."
"Well, call them branches if it be your taste;
But—but I may not jest. Haste, mother, haste!"
Now, midway of the grotto, they descry
A large, round table of red porphyry;
And, radiating from this wondrous place,
Lower than root of oak or mountain base,
Infinite aisles whose gleaming columns cluster
Like pendant icicles in shape and lustre.
These are the far-famed galleries of the lays,
Here evermore a hazy brightness plays,
Temples and shining palaces are here,
Majestic porticoes their fronts uprear,
And many a labyrinth and peristyle
The like whereof was never seen erewhile,
Even in Corinth or in Babylon.
Yet let a fairy breathe, and these are gone!
And here, like flickering rays of light, disperse
Through the dim walks of this serene Chartreuse,
The fairies with their knights long since enchanted.
Peace to the aisles by their fair presence haunted!
And now the witch was ready. First of all,
She lifted high her hands, then let them fall,
While Vincen had like holy Lawrence lain
Upon the porphyry table, mute with pain.
And mightily the spirit of the crone
Appeared to work within her; and as grown
She seemed, when, rising to her height anew,
She plunged her ladle in the boiling stew
That overflowed the caldron in the heat,
While all the cats arose and ringed her feet,
And, with her left hand, unto Vincen's breast
Applied the scalding drops with solemn zest,
Gazing intently on him where he lay,
Until the cruel hurt was charmed away;
And all the while, "The Lord is born, is dead,
Is risen, shall rise again," she murmurèd.
Last on the quivering flesh the cross she made
Thrice with her toe-nail; as in forest glade
A tigress fiercely claws her fallen prey.
And now her speech maketh tumultuous way
To where the dim gates of the future are.
"Yea, he shall rise! I see him now afar
"Amid the stones and thistles of the hill,
His forehead bleeding heavily. And still
Over the stones and briers he makes his way,
Bowed by his cross. Where is Veronica
To wipe the blood? And him of Cyrene
To stay him when he fainteth,—where is he?
"And where the weeping Maries, hair dishevelled?
All gone! And rich and poor, before him leveled,
Gaze while he mounts; and 'Who is this,' one saith,
'Who climbs with shouldered beam, and never stayeth?'
O carnal sons of men! The Cross-bearer
Is unto you but as a beaten cur.
"O cruel Jews! Wherefore so fiercely bite you
The hands that feed, and lick the hands that smite you?
Receive the fruit of your foul deeds you must.
Your precious gems shall crumble into dust,
And that you deemed fair pulse or wholesome wheat
Shall turn to ashes even while you eat,
"And scare your very hunger. Woe is me!
Rivers that foam o'er carrion-heaps I see,
And swords and lances in tumultuous motion.
Peace to thy stormy waves, thou vexèd Ocean!
Shall Peter's ancient bark withstand the shock?
Alas, it strikes upon the senseless rock!
"Nay, bat there cometh One with power to save!
Fisher of men, he quells the rebel wave.
A fair new bark the Rhone is entering now:
She hath God's cross uplifted on her prow,
Rainbow divine! Eternal clemency!
Another land, another sun, I see!
"Dance olive-pickers, where the fruit is shining;
Drink reapers, on the barley-sheaves reclining!
Revealed by signs so many, God," she said,
"Is in his holy temple worshippèd."
And, stretching forth her hand, the witch of Baux
Pointed the way and bade the children go.
Light gleamed afar. They haste the ray to follow;
They thread their way to the Cordovan Hollow,12
Where sun and air await them, and they seem
To see Mont Majour's wrecks, as in a dream,
Strewn o'er the hill; yet on the sunlit verge
Pause for one kiss or ever they emerge.