SOON to the farm came suitor number two, | |
| 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, | 5 |
| Who nipped the heads of all the lofty reeds. | |
| |
| A hundred steeds! Their long manes flowing free | |
| As the foam-crested billows of the sea! | |
| Wavy and thick and all unshorn were they; | |
| And when the horses on their headlong way | 10 |
| Plunged all together, their dishevelled hair | |
| Seemed the white robes of creatures of the air. | |
| |
| I say it to the shame of human kind: | |
| Camargan steeds were never known to mind | |
| The cruel spur more than the coaxing hand. | 15 |
| Only a few or so, I understand, | |
| By treachery seduced, have halter worn, | |
| And from their own salt prairies been borne; | |
| |
| Yet the day comes when, with a vicious start, | |
| Their riders throwing, suddenly they part, | 20 |
| 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. | |
| |
| For these wild steeds are with the sea at home: | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| |
| Their sweeping tails like whipcord snapping loudly; | |
| 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 | 35 |
| Stirs to its depths in uttermost commotion. | |
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