Ye thunders and stern voices of the peaks, murmurings of wild woods, torrents from the mountains, there is a voice that dominates you all, the clear, beautiful voice of my love.

Alas! vale of Uriage, we may never return to thy leafy nooks.  She, a star, vanisheth in air, and I, folding my tent, go forth into the wilderness.

* * * * *

Apart from the intrinsic worth of the thought or sentiment, there is found in Mistral the essential gift of the poet, the power of expression—­of clothing in words that fully embody the meaning, and seem to sing, in spontaneous musical flow, the inner inspiration.  He is superior to the other poets of the Felibrige, not only in the energy, the vitality of his personality, and in the fertility of his ideas, but also in this great gift of language.  Even if he creates his vocabulary as he goes along, somewhat after the fashion of Ronsard and the Pleiade, he does this in strict accordance with the genius of his dialect, fortunately for him, untrammelled by traditions, and, what is significant, he does it acceptably.  He is the master.  His fellow-poets proclaim and acclaim his supremacy.  No one who has penetrated to any degree into the genius of the Romance languages can fail to agree that in this point exists a master of one of its forms.

CHAPTER III

THE TEAGEDY, LA REINO JANO

The peculiar qualities and limitations of Mistral are possibly nowhere better evidenced than in this play.  Full of charming passages, frequently eloquent, here and there very poetic, it is scarcely dramatic, and certainly not a tragedy either of the French or the Shakespearian type.  The most striking lines, the most eloquent tirades, arise less from the exigences of the drama than from the constant desire of the poet to give expression to his love of Provence.  The attention of the reader is diverted at every turn from the adventures of the persons in the play to the glories and the beauties of the lovely land in which our poet was born.  The matter of a play is certainly contained in the subject, but the energy of the author has not been spent upon the invention of strong situations, upon the clash of wills, upon the psychology of his characters, upon the interplay of passions, but rather upon strengthening in the hearts of his Provencal hearers the love of the good Queen Joanna, whose life has some of the romance of that of Mary, Queen of Scots, and upon letting them hear from her lips and from the lips of her courtiers the praises of Provence.