lds, among the mowers and gleaners, and
everywhere solemnly delivers his message in the selfsame words. He goes
down to the Crau, among the dwarf oaks, and summons the shepherds. All
these toilers gather about the head of the farm and his wife, who await
them in gloomy silence. Meste Ramoun, without making clear what
misfortune has overtaken him, entreats the men to tell him what they
have seen. And the chief of the haymakers, father of seven sons, tells
of an evil omen, how, for the first time in thirty years, at the
beginning of his day's work, he had cut himself. The parents moan the
more. Then a mower from Tarascon tells how as he began his work he had
discovered a nest wherein the young birds had been done to death by a
myriad of invading ants. Again "the tale of woe was a lance-thrust for
the father and mother." A third had been taken as with epilepsy, a
shudder had passed over him, and through his dishevelled hair as through
the heads of thistles he had felt Death pass like a wind. A fourth had
seen Mireio just before the dawn, and had heard her say, "Will none
among the shepherds come with me to the Holy Maries?" And then while the
mother laments, preparations are made to follow the maiden to the
shrines out yonder by the sea.

This poem, then, depicts for us the rustic life of Provence in all its
outward aspects. The pretty tale and the description of the life of the
Mas and of the Provencal landscapes are inseparably woven together,
forming an harmonious whole. It is not a tragedy, all the characters are
too utterly lacking in depth. Vincen and Mireio are but a boy and a
girl, children just awakening to life. The reader may be reminded of
Hermann and Dorothea, of Gabriel and Evangeline, but the creations of
the German and the American poet are greatly superior in all that
represents study of the human mind and heart.

Goethe's poem and Mistral's have several points of likeness. Hermann
seeks to marry against his father's wish, and the objection is the
poverty of Dorothea. The case is merely inverted. Both poems imitate the
Homeric style, Goethe's more palpably than Mistral's, since the German
poet has adopted the Homeric verse. He affects, also, certain recurring
terms of expression, "Also sprach sie" and the like, and there is a
rather artificial seeking after simplicity of expression. Goethe's poem
is more interesting because of the greater solidity of the characters,
and because of the more closely knitted