IX.
Sometimes they lunge, then feign the thrust and parry;
Deep masters of the desperate game they play;
Or rise upon the furious stroke, and carry
Their swords aloft, or stoop and stand at bay.
Again they close, again exhausted tarry;
Now hide, now show themselves, and now give way,
And where one knight an inch of ground has granted,
His foeman’s foot upon that inch is planted.
X.
When, lo! Rinaldo, now impatient grown,
Strikes full at Sacripant with lifted blade;
And he puts forth his buckler made of bone,
And well with strong and stubborn steel inlaid:
Though passing thick, Fusberta[2] cleaves it: groan
Greenwood, and covert close, and sunny glade.
The paynim’s arm rings senseless with the blow,
And steel and bone, like ice, in shivers go.
XI.
When the fair damsel saw, with timid eye,
Such ruin follow from the faulchion’s sway,
She, like the criminal, whose doom is nigh,
Changed her fair countenance through sore dismay,
And deemed that little time was left to fly
If she would not be that Rinaldo’s prey,
Rinaldo loathed by her as much, as he
Boats on the scornful damsel miserably.
