f his prose, and the number of lines in
the prose translation that are really ten-syllable verses is quite
remarkable. On one page (page 183 of the third edition, Lemerre) more
than half the lines are verses.

Is the _Poem of the Rhone_ a great poem? Whether it is or not, it
accomplishes admirably the purpose of its author, to fix in beautiful
verse the former life of the Rhone. That much of it is prosaic was
inevitable; the nature of the subject rendered it so. It is full of
beauties, and the poet who wrote _Mireio_ and completed it before his
thirtieth year, has shown that in the last decade of his threescore
years and ten he could produce a work as full of fire, energy, life, and
enthusiasm as in the stirring days when the Felibrige was young. In this
poem there occurs a passage put into the mouth of the Prince, which
gives a view of life that we suspect is the poet's own. He here calls
the Prince a young sage, and as we look back over Mistral's life, and
review its aims, and the conditions in which he has striven, we incline
to think that here, in a few words, he has condensed his thought.

"For what is life but a dream, a distant appearance, an illusion gliding
on the water, which, fleeing ever before our eyes, dazzles us like a
mirror flashing, entices and lures us on! Ah, how good it is to sail on
ceaselessly toward one's desire, even though it is but a dream! The time
will come, it is near, perhaps, when men will have everything within
their reach, when they will possess everything, when they will know and
have proved everything; and, regretting the old mirages, who knows but
what they will not grow weary of living!"

CHAPTER II

LIS ISCLO D'OR

The lover of poetry will probably find more to admire and cherish in
this volume than in any other that has come from the pen of its author,
excepting, possibly, the best passages of _Mireio_. It is the collection
of his short poems that appeared from time to time in different
Provencal publications, the earliest dating as far back as 1848, the
latest written in 1888. They are a very complete expression of his
poetic ideas, and contain among their number gems of purest poesy. The
poet's lyre has not many strings, and the strains of sadness, of pensive
melancholy, are almost absent. Mistral has once, and very successfully,
tried the theme of Lainartine's _Lac_, of Musset's _Souvenir_, of Hugo's
_Tristesse d'Olympio_; but his poem is not an elegy, it has not t