CANTO V.
THE BATTLE.
COOL with the coming eve the wind was blowing,
The shadows of the poplars longer growing;
Yet still the westering sun was two hours high,
As the tired ploughman noted wistfully,—
Two hours of toil ere the fresh twilight come,
And wifely greeting by the door at home.
But Ourrias the brander left the spring,
The insult he had suffered pondering.
So moved to wrath was he, so stung with shame,
The blood into his very forehead came;
And, muttering deadly spite beneath his teeth,
He drave at headlong gallop o'er the heath.
Ah damsons in a bush, the stones of Crau
Are plentiful; and Ourrias, fuming so,
Would gladly with the senseless flints have striven,
Or through the sun itself his lance have driven.
A wild boar from his lair forced to decamp,
And scour the desert slopes of black Oulympe,1
