uthor, thus announces the poems:--

"The pomegranate is of its nature wilder than other trees. It loves to
grow in pebbly elevations (_clapeirolo_) in the full sun-rays, far from
man and nearer to God. There alone, in the scorching summer-beams, it
expands in secret its blood-red flowers. Love and the sun fecundate
its bloom. In the crimson chalices thousands of coral-grains germ
spontaneously, like a thousand fair sisters all under the same roof.

"The swollen pomegranate holds imprisoned as long as it can the roseate
seeds, the thousand blushing sisters. But the birds of the moor speak to
the solitary tree, saying,--'What wilt thou do with the seeds? Even now
comes the autumn, even now comes the winter, that chases us beyond the
hills, beyond the seas.....And shall it be said, O wild pomegranate,
that we have left Provence without seeing thy beautiful coral-grains,
without having a glimpse of thy thousand virgin daughters?'

"Then, to satisfy the envious birdlings of the moor, the pomegranate
slowly half-opens its fruit; the thousand vermeil seeds glitter in the
sun; the thousand timorous sisters with rosy cheeks peep through the
arched window: and the roguish birds come in flocks and feast at ease on
the beautiful coral-grains; the roguish lovers devour with kisses the
fair blushing sisters.

"Aubanel--and you will say as I do, when you have read his book--is a
wild pomegranate-tree. The Provencal public, whom his first poems had
pleased so much, was beginning to say,--'But what is our Aubanel doing,
that we no longer hear him sing?'"

Then follows an exposition of the hopeless passion of the poet,--how he
took for motto,

"Quau canto,
Soun mau encanto."

Hence the three books of poems now before us,--"The Book of Love,"
"Twilight," and "The Book of Death." "The Book of Love," "a thing
excessively rare," as we are told in the Preface, "but this one written
in good faith," opens with a couplet that is a key to the whole
volume:--

"I am sick at heart,
And _will_ not be cured."

We subjoin a literal translation of the eleventh song, line for line:--

De-la-man-d'eila de la mar,
Dins mis ouro de pantaiage,
Souventi-fes ieu fau un viage,
Ieu fau souvent un viage amar,
De-la-man-d'eila, de la mar."
etc., etc.

"Far away, beyond the seas,
In my hours of reverie,
Oftentimes I make a voyage,
I often make a bitter voyage,
Far away, beyond the seas.

"Yonder far, towards th