Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.
Camargue
By Frédéric Mistral (18301914)
Translated by Harriet W. Preston
S
A keeper of wild horses from Sambu,—
Veran, by name. About his island home
In the great prairies, where the asters bloom,
He used to keep a hundred milk-white steeds,
Who nipped the heads of all the lofty reeds.
As the foam-crested billows of the sea!
Wavy and thick and all unshorn were they;
And when the horses on their headlong way
Plunged all together, their dishevelled hair
Seemed the white robes of creatures of the air.
Camargan steeds were never known to mind
The cruel spur more than the coaxing hand.
Only a few or so, I understand,
By treachery seduced, have halter worn,
And from their own salt prairies been borne;
Their riders throwing, suddenly they part,
And twenty leagues of land unresting scour,
Snuffing the wind, till Vacarès once more
They find, the salt air breathe, and joy to be
In freedom after ten years’ slavery.
Have they not still the color of the foam?
Perchance they brake from old King Neptune’s car;
For when the sea turns dark and moans afar,
And the ships part their cables in the bay,
The stallions of Camargue rejoicing neigh,
Or pawing the earth, all, fiercely and proudly,
As though their flanks were stung as with a rod
By the sharp trident of the angry god,
Who makes the rain a deluge, and the ocean
Stirs to its depths in uttermost commotion.