On the sloping market-place,
In the village of Compeigne,
Every Saturday her face,
Like a Sunday, comes again;
Daylight finds her in her seat,
With her panier at her feet,
Where her pigeons lie in pairs;
Like their plumage gray her gown,
To her sabots drooping down;
And a kerchief, brightly brown,
Binds her smooth, dark hairs.
All the buyers knew her well,
And, perforce, her face must see,
As a holy Raphael
Lures us in a gallery;
Round about the rustics gape,
Drinking in her comely shape,
And the housewives gently speak,
When into her eyes they look,
As within some holy book,
And the gables, high and crook,
Fling their sunshine on her cheek.
In her hands two milk-white doves,
Happy in her lap to lie,
Softly murmur of their loves,
Envied by the passers-by;
One by one their flight they take,
Bought and cherished for her sake,
Leaving so reluctantly;
Till the shadows close approach,
Fades the pageant, foot and coach,
And the giants in the cloche
Ring the noon for Picardie.
Round the village see her glide,
With a slender sunbeam's pace!
Mirrored in the Oise's tide,
The gold-fish float upon her face;
All the soldiers touch their caps;
In the cafÉs quit their naps
GarÇon, guest, to wish her back;
And the fat old beadles smile
As she kneels along the aisle,
Like Pucelle in other while,
In the dim church of Saint Jacques.
Now she mounts her dappled ass—
He well-pleased such friend to know—
And right merrily they pass
The armorial chÂteau;
Down the long, straight paths they tread
Till the forest, overhead,
Whispers low its leafy love;
In the archways' green caress
Rides the wondrous dryadess—
Thrills the grass beneath her press,
And the blue-eyed sky above.
I have met her, o'er and o'er,
As I strolled alone apart,
By a lonely carrefour
In the forest's tangled heart,
Safe as any stag that bore
Imprint of the Emperor;
In the copse that round her grew
Tiptoe the straight saplings stood,
Peeped the wild boar's satyr brood,
Like an arrow clove the wood
The glad note of the cuckoo.
How I wished myself her friend!
(So she wished that I were more)
Jogging toward her journey's end
At Saint Jean au Bois before,
Where her father's acres fall
Just without the abbey wall;
By the cool well loiteringly
The shaggy Norman horses stray,
In the thatch the pigeons play,
And the forest round alway
Folds the hamlet, like a sea.
Far forgotten all the feud
In my New World's childhood haunts,
If my childhood she renewed
In this pleasant nook of France;
Might she make the blouse I wear,
Welcome then her homely fare
And her sensuous religion!
To the market we should ride,
In the Mass kneel side by side,
Might I warm, each eventide,
In my nest, my pretty pigeon.