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The archers shotte their arrowes sharpe and keene,
Dipt in the bitter juyce of poyson strong;
The shady face of heaven was scantly seen,
Hid with the cloud of shafts and quarries long;
Yet weapons sharp with greater fury beene
Cast from the towres the Pagan troops among;
For thence flew stones, and clifts of marble rocks,
Trees shod with iron, timber, logs, and blocks.
A thunderbolt seemed every stone; it brake
His limmes and armour so on whom it light,
That life and soule it did not only take,
But all his face and shape disfigured quight:
The lances staid not in the wounds they make,
But through the gored body tooke their flight
From side to side; through flesh, through skin and rinde
They flew, and flying left sadde death behinde.
But yet not all this force and fury drove
The Pagan people to forsake the walle,
But to revenge these deadly blowes they strove
With darts that flie, with stones and trees that fall;
For need so cowards oft courageous prove,
For liberty they fight, for life, for all,
And oft with arrows, shafts, and stones that flie,
Give bitter answer to a sharp replie.
This while the fierce assailants never cease,
But sternly still maintaine a threefold charge,
And ’gainst the cloud of shafts draw nigh at ease,
Under a pentise made of many a targe;
The armed towres close to the bulwarks prease,
And strive to grapple with the battled marge,
And launch their bridges out; mean while below
With iron fronts, the rammes the walls down throwe.
(68–71.)