LXVI.
And found, the lady messenger, with maid
And squire, had issued from the castled hold,
And was a-field, where her arrival stayed
Those three good warriors, those the damsel bold
The eve before had on the champaign laid,
Cast from their horses by her lance of gold;
And who had suffered, to their mighty pain,
All night, the freezing wind and pattering rain.
LXVII.
Add to such ill, that, hungering sore for food,
They and their horses, through the livelong night,
Trampling the mire, with chattering teeth, had stood:
But (what well-nigh engendered more despite
—Say not well nigh—more moved the warrior’s mood)
Was that they knew the damsel would recite
How they had been unhorsed by hostile lance
In the first course which they had run in France;
LXVIII.
And—each resolved to die or else his name
Forthwith in new encounter to retrieve—
That Ulany, the message-bearing dame,
(Whose style no longer I unmentioned leave),
A fairer notion of their knightly fame
Than heretofore, might haply now conceive,
Bold Bradamant anew to tight defied,
When of the drawbridge clear they her descried;
