fiho
Que lou beu tems escarrabiho,
Coume un vou de bloundis abiho
Que raubon sa melico i roumanin dou gres."

This certainly is a stanza of great beauty, and eminently adapted to the
language. Mistral is exceedingly skilful in the use of it, distributing
pauses effectively, breaking the monotony of the repeated feminine
verses with enjambements, and continuing the sense from one stanza to
the next. This stanza, like the language, is pretty and would scarcely
be a suitable vehicle for poetic expression requiring great depth or
stateliness. Provencal verse in general cannot be said to possess
majesty or the rich _orchestral_ quality Brunetiere finds in Victor
Hugo. Its qualities are sweetness, daintiness, rapidity, grace, a
merry, tripping flow, great smoothness, and very musical rhythm.

_Mireio_ contains one ballad and two lyrics in a measure differing from
that of the rest of the poem. The ballad of the _Bailiff Suffren_ has
the swing and movement a sea ballad should possess. The stanza is of six
lines, of ten syllables each, with the caesura after the fifth syllable,
the rhymes being _abb, aba_.

"Lou Baile Sufren | que sus mar coumando."

In the third canto occurs the famous song _Magali_, so popular in
Provence. The melody is printed at the end of the volume. Mireio's
prayer in the tenth canto is in five-syllable verse with rhymes _abbab_.

The poems of the _Isclo d'Or_ offer over eighty varieties of strophe, a
most remarkable number. This variety is produced by combining in
different manners the verse lengths, and by changes in the succession of
rhymes. Whatever ingenuity Mistral has exercised in the creation of
rhythms, the impression must not be created that inspiration has
suffered through attention to mechanism, or that he is to be classed
with the old Provencal versifiers or those who flourished in northern
France just before the time of Marot. Artifice is always strictly
subordinated, and the poet seems to sing spontaneously. No violence is
ever done to the language in order to force it into artificial moulds,
there is no punning in rhymes, there is nothing that can be charged
against the poet as beneath the real dignity of his art.

Let us look at some of the more striking of these verse forms. The
second of _Li Cansoun, Lou Bastimen_, offers the following form:--

"Lou bastimen ven de Maiorco
Eme d'arange un cargamen:
An courouna de verdi torco
L'aubre-mestr